Sensitivity to Crossover Constraints During Native and Non-native Pronoun Resolution

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Pronoun resolution is a complex cognitive process crucial for language comprehension.
• Crossover constraints, specifically strong (SCO) and weak (WCO), influence how potential antecedents are assigned to pronouns.
• Understanding how native and non-native speakers process these constraints offers insights into language acquisition and processing mechanisms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate native and non-native German speakers' sensitivity to strong crossover (SCO) and weak crossover (WCO) constraints during pronoun resolution.
• To determine if SCO and WCO constraints are processed differently and at what stage of comprehension.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted using German sentences with personal pronouns in SCO and WCO configurations.
• Experiment 1 employed eye-movement monitoring during reading to track processing times and identify early effects.
• Experiment 2 utilized an offline antecedent judgment task to assess comprehension outcomes.

Main Results:

• Both native and non-native speakers showed immediate gender-mismatch effects in weak crossover (WCO) configurations, indicating initial attempts at coreference.
• No such effects were observed in strong crossover (SCO) configurations, suggesting SCO constraints are applied early to restrict interpretation.
• Results from the offline task corroborated the reading-time data, showing a clear asymmetry between SCO and WCO processing.

Conclusions:

• The strong crossover (SCO) constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation for both native and non-native German speakers.
• Weak crossover (WCO) constraints appear to be processed differently, allowing for initial attempts at coreference.
• The findings suggest that SCO and WCO constraints may originate from distinct processing mechanisms or linguistic principles.