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Are implicit causality pronoun resolution biases consistent across languages and cultures?
Joshua K Hartshorne1, Yasutada Sudo, Miki Uruwashi
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. jharts@wjh.harvard.edu
Experimental Psychology
|December 25, 2012
Summary
Pronoun resolution, or understanding who "she" refers to, is consistent across languages for emotion verbs. This suggests implicit causality is stable across cultures, despite some theories suggesting cognitive variation.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cross-cultural Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Pronoun resolution, determining the referent of a nonreflexive pronoun, is context-dependent.
- The nature of contextual restrictions on pronoun resolution is debated, particularly regarding cross-linguistic and cross-cultural consistency.
- Previous research suggests potential cross-cultural variation in cognitive processes, including linguistic ones.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether pronoun resolution biases, specifically implicit causality, are consistent across different languages and cultures.
- To test the hypothesis that verbs with similar meanings across languages should exhibit similar pronoun resolution effects.
- To provide empirical data to resolve the controversy surrounding cross-cultural variation in linguistic cognition.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of pronoun resolution data in eight languages.
- Languages were selected from four historically unrelated language families to ensure broad coverage.
- Focus on pronoun resolution biases associated with emotion verbs in causal dependent clauses.
Main Results:
- Consistent pronoun resolution biases were observed for emotion verbs across all tested languages.
- This consistency suggests that the underlying information driving implicit causality pronoun resolution is stable.
- Findings challenge theories predicting significant cross-cultural variation in this aspect of linguistic cognition.
Conclusions:
- Implicit causality pronoun resolution biases, particularly for emotion verbs, appear to be universal.
- The study provides evidence for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural stability in a key aspect of language processing.
- This stability suggests a shared cognitive foundation for interpreting pronoun referents in specific linguistic contexts.
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