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'Who' should be focused? The influence of focus status on pronoun resolution.
- Source :
-
Psychophysiology . Nov2016, Vol. 53 Issue 11, p1679-1689. 11p. 1 Diagram, 2 Charts, 1 Graph. - Publication Year :
- 2016
-
Abstract
- Focus is assumed to be able to enhance the salience of a focused constituent and thereby facilitate the interpretation of a pronoun that refers to a focused antecedent relative to an unfocused antecedent. To assess how discourse-based focus structure influences the interpretation of a pronoun and whether this process is modulated by the grammatical role of the antecedent, we conducted an ERP study in which the focus status of a pronoun's potential antecedents was manipulated by means of a wh-question-answer structure. We found that, relative to those in the focused position, pronouns referring to antecedents in the unfocused position evoked enhanced positive responses in both early (180-230 ms) and late time windows (400-800 ms). Moreover, while a larger positivity was evoked by object-referring pronouns compared to subject-referring pronouns in the 400-800 ms time window over the right hemisphere, there was no effect of grammatical role in the 180-230 ms time window. These findings indicate that, while the initial stage of pronoun resolution is modulated by focus information assigned via a wh-question structure, integration of the pronoun and its antecedent into a coherent discourse representation at the later stage could be constrained by various factors, including the focus status and possibly the grammatical role of the antecedent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00485772
- Volume :
- 53
- Issue :
- 11
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Psychophysiology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 118762534
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12740