The influence of morphological information on cataphoric pronoun assignment

J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2003 Jan;29(1):128-39. doi: 10.1037//0278-7393.29.1.128.

Abstract

In 3 eye-tracking experiments, the authors investigated the use of morphological information during pronoun resolution. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that disruption occurred when a preferred assignment was inconsistent with gender information. Experiment 2 ensured that this difficulty was not due to the introduction of a new discourse entity. Experiment 3 showed that disruption also occurred when number information was inconsistent with the preferred assignment. The results indicate that the use of morphological information is delayed until after the computation of coreference relations.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Eye Movements
  • Fixation, Ocular
  • Humans
  • Linguistics / methods
  • Random Allocation
  • Semantics*
  • Vocabulary*