The influence of 'aboutness' on pronominal coreference

  • Previous work examining the role of antecedent accessibility in pronominal coreference has often linked coreference to prominent structural positions that in turn are linked to information structure statuses such as topic. Three experiments examine the influence of topichood independently of structural prominence by exploring the influence of the pragmatic notion of aboutness on the written production of pronominal coreferring expressions. The results show that being mentioned in an about-phrase increases the likelihood that a referent will be selected as the future topic of a following sentence as well as increasing the proportion of responses with early, pronominal coreference to that referent, at the expense of coreference with the subject. These results suggest that coreference is sensitive to the status of other, structurally non-prominent referents in discourse, and that the pragmatic notion of aboutness influences pronominal coreference.

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Metadaten
Author:H. Wind Cowles
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-310103
URL:http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/185.html
ISSN:1435-9588
ISSN:0947-7055
Parent Title (English):Intersentential pronominal reference in child and adult language : proceedings of the Conference on Intersentential Pronominal Reference in Child and Adult Language, December 1 - 2, 2006, Berlin / Dagmar Bittner & Natalia Gagarina (ed.)
Publisher:Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung
Place of publication:Berlin
Document Type:Part of a Book
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2007
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2013/11/14
GND Keyword:Informationsstruktur; Referenzidentität; Englisch
Volume:48
Page Number:16
First Page:23
Last Page:38
HeBIS-PPN:454822707
Dewey Decimal Classification:4 Sprache / 42 Englisch, Altenglisch / 420 Englisch, Altenglisch
Sammlungen:Linguistik
Linguistik-Klassifikation:Linguistik-Klassifikation: Syntax
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte:ZAS papers in linguistics : ZASPiL / ZASPiL 48 = Intersentential pronominal reference in child and adult language
:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-306914
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht