Pronominal anaphora resolution in Polish: Investigating online sentence interpretation using eye-tracking

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Anaphora resolution mechanisms vary significantly across languages.
• Pronoun sensitivity to referential factors differs cross-linguistically.
• Understanding these differences is crucial for linguistic theory.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate anaphora resolution mechanisms in Polish.
• To explore preferences for null versus overt pronoun interpretation.
• To examine the cognitive processing of pronoun-antecedent relationships.

Main Methods:

• Ambiguous sentence interpretation tasks.
• Eye-tracking during online sentence processing.
• Naturalness ratings of pronoun interpretations.

Main Results:

• Polish speakers prefer null pronouns for subjects and overt pronouns for objects.
• Only overt pronouns showed sensitivity to violated antecedent preferences.
• Null pronoun resolution appears more flexible than overt pronoun resolution.

Conclusions:

• Null and overt pronouns in Polish are governed by different interpretive factors.
• Flexibility in null pronoun reference facilitates easier shifts to less preferred antecedents.
• Cross-linguistic differences in anaphora resolution stem from varying pronoun sensitivities.