Eye-catching Anaphora

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1 Eye-catching Anaphora

2 Published by LOT Janskerkhof BL Utrecht The Netherlands phone: fax: Cover illustration: M.C. Escher s Eye. Copyright 2008: The M.C. Escher Company B.V. - Baarn The Netherlands. All rights reserved. ISBN NUR 616 Copyright 2008: Arnout Willem Koornneef. All rights reserved

3 Eye-catching Anaphora Oogstrelende Anaforen (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. J.C. Stoof, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 17 september 2008 des middags te 2.30 uur. door Arnout Willem Koornneef geboren op 16 februari 1978 te Amsterdam

4 Promotoren: Prof. dr. E. Reuland Prof. dr. F. Wijnen

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7 Voor Maartje

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9 Table of contents CHAPTER 1 ANAPHORIC DEPENDENCIES: A WINDOW INTO THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE LANGUAGE SYSTEM INTRODUCTION Linguists, psycholinguists and a virus Modularity Anaphoric dependencies STRUCTURAL CONSTRAINTS: FROM CLASSICAL BINDING TO PRIMITIVES OF BINDING Classical binding approach Primitives of Binding approach Syntactic anaphoric dependencies Semantic and discourse anaphoric dependencies Rule-I The POB framework in real time The economy principle DISCOURSE CONSTRAINTS: THE ACCESSIBILITY OF ANTECEDENTS EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY Self-paced reading Eye tracking Different reading time measures Linking eye-movement behavior to the human mind MAIN RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND A QUICK PREVIEW Part 1: Evaluating the POB model Part 2: Studies on accessibility CHAPTER 2 CHEAP REFLEXIVES VERSUS PRICEY LOGOPHORS INTRODUCTION Logophoricity Reflexives and logophors in Dutch Studies on economy differences between true reflexives and logophors EXPERIMENT 1: COARGUMENT REFLEXIVES AND LOGOPHORS IN UNRESTRAINED READING Stimuli Method Results and discussion GENERAL DISCUSSION

10 CHAPTER 3 STRICTLY DISCOURSE OR SLOPPY SEMANTICS? INTRODUCTION A dual-route architecture for pronoun resolution STUDIES ON AGRAMMATIC APHASICS AND PRE- SCHOOL CHILDREN ONLINE STUDIES ON HEALTHY ADULTS Reactivation of antecedents Self-paced reading and the LF-only hypothesis SUMMARY OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES EXPERIMENT 2 AND The only-operator The stimuli Experiment 2: A sloppy questionnaire Method Results Selection procedure for eye-tracking stimuli Experiment 3: Sloppy eye tracking Method Results Discussion EXPERIMENT 4: BINDING VERSUS COREFERENCE, AND RULE-I The stimuli and predictions Method Results Discussion EXPERIMENT 5: ECONOMY VERSUS COMPLEXITY The stimuli and predictions Method Results Discussion Cross-modular versus intrinsic economy OVERVIEW OF THE EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS GENERAL CONCLUSION CHAPTER 4 THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE POB MODEL: ECONOMY, SEQUENTIALITY AND MODULARITY INTRODUCTION EVALUATING THE POB MODEL Economy Weak, intermediate and strong economy Blocking and preference Sequentiality Modularity Conclusion

11 4.3. IMPLEMENTING THE POB MODEL Competing models on anaphora resolution The POB versus the defeasible filter model The POB versus the syntactic prominence model CHAPTER 5 EXPLORING THE DISCOURSE PHASE: IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND ACCESSIBILITY INTRODUCTION What is implicit causality? Clausal integration versus immediate focusing account The time course of the use of implicit causality information EXPERIMENT 6: SELF-PACED READING Method Results EXPERIMENT 7: EYE TRACKING Method Results INTERIM DISCUSSION EXPERIMENT 8: THREE CONNECTIVES Stimuli and predictions Method Results Discussion GENERAL DISCUSSION Overview and implications of the results Incremental integration, immediate focusing or prediction? Implicit causality, accessibility and the POB model CHAPTER 6 OVERVIEW, GENERAL CONCLUSION AND BEYOND OVERVIEW OF THE DISSERTATION Part 1: Evaluating the POB model Theoretical background The economy principle and its predictions Summary of Chapter Summary of Chapter Summary of Chapter Part 2: Exploring the discourse phase Summary of Chapter GENERAL CONCLUSION FUTURE RESEARCH BEYOND ANAPHORA Converging approaches: The POB and Friederici s neurocognitive model

12 Anticipation and prediction Language is a virus BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX I APPENDIX II APPENDIX III APPENDIX IV APPENDIX V APPENDIX VI SAMENVATTING IN HET NEDERLANDS

13 List of Figures FIGURE 1. A SIMPLE SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE FIGURE 2. C-COMMAND OR SISTERHOOD FIGURE 3. A-CHAIN FORMATION: TWO CROSS-MODULAR STEPS FIGURE 4. VARIABLE BINDING: THREE CROSS-MODULAR STEPS FIGURE 5. COREFERENCE: FOUR CROSS-MODULAR STEPS FIGURE 6. COMPUTATION OF DIFFERENT READING TIME MEASURES IN EYE-TRACKING STUDIES FIGURE 7. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE REFLEXIVE AND LOGOPHOR IN EXP FIGURE 8. SIMPLIFIED SYNTACTIC TREE OF EXAMPLE (1) FIGURE 9. MEAN FIRST FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR REGION 3-9 FOR THE ELLIPSIS STORIES IN EXP FIGURE 10. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE ELLIPSIS REGIONS IN EXP FIGURE 11. MEAN SECOND-PASS DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE SECOND SENTENCE (I.E. REGION 1) OF THE STORIES IN EXP FIGURE 12. MEAN SECOND-PASS DURATIONS (IN MS PER CHARACTER) FOR THE VB- AND CR-BIAS CONDITIONS IN EXP FIGURE 13. MEAN SECOND-PASS DURATIONS (IN MS PER CHARACTER) FOR THE VB- AND CR-ONLY CONDITIONS IN EXP FIGURE 14. MEAN SECOND-PASS DURATIONS (IN MS PER CHARACTER) FOR THE UNAMBIGUOUS CONDITIONS IN EXP FIGURE 15. MEAN TOTAL FIRST GAZE AND TOTAL FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE FIRST SPILLOVER REGION (REGION 6) OF THE RCC AND RNOCC CONDITIONS IN EXP FIGURE 16. THE POB MODEL FIGURE 17. MEAN READING TIMES (IN MS) FOR THE CONSISTENT AND INCONSISTENT CONDITION IN EXP FIGURE 18. MEAN FIRST FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE CONSISTENT AND INCONSISTENT CONDITION IN EXP FIGURE 19. MEAN FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE CONSISTENT AND INCONSISTENT CONDITION IN EXP FIGURE 20. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE CONSISTENT AND INCONSISTENT CONDITION IN EXP FIGURE 21. MEAN FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE FIRST SPILLOVER REGION (REGION 3) OF THE WANT ( BECAUSE ) AND MAAR ( BUT ) CONDITIONS IN EXP FIGURE 22. MEAN TOTAL FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE FIRST SPILLOVER REGION (REGION 3) OF THE WANT ( BECAUSE ) AND MAAR ( BUT ) CONDITIONS IN EXP FIGURE 23. THE ERP RESULTS OF VAN BERKUM ET AL. (2007) FIGURE 24. THE POB MODEL

14 List of Tables TABLE 1. MEAN FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS) AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 2. MEAN TOTAL FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS) AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 3. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS) AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 4. MEAN TOTAL FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS) AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 5. MEAN SECOND-PASS DURATIONS (IN MS) AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 6. MEAN DIFFICULTY AND PLAUSIBILITY RATINGS FOR THE STORIES IN EXP TABLE 7. MEAN BIAS TOWARDS CONSISTENT INTERPRETATION FOR THE STORIES IN EXP TABLE 8. MEAN RATINGS FOR THE SLOPPY AND STRICT INTERPRETATION OF THE STORIES IN EXP TABLE 9. MEAN BIAS TOWARDS CONSISTENT INTERPRETATION FOR EYE-TRACKING STIMULI (EXP. 3) TABLE 10. MEAN DIFFICULTY AND PLAUSIBILITY RATINGS FOR EYE-TRACKING STIMULI (EXP. 3) TABLE 11. MEAN FIRST FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 12. MEAN FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 13. MEAN TOTAL FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 14. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 15. MEAN TOTAL FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 16. MEAN SECOND-PASS DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 17. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS) FOR THE ELLIPSIS REGION FOR THE ENERGETIC AND LAZY GROUP (EXP.3) TABLE 18. MEAN FIRST GAZE, REGRESSION PATH, SECOND-PASS AND TOTAL FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS PER CHARACTER) FOR THE VB-BIAS AND CR-BIAS CONDITION IN EXP TABLE 19. MEAN FIRST GAZE, REGRESSION PATH, SECOND-PASS AND TOTAL FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS PER CHARACTER) FOR THE UNAMBIGUOUS CONDITIONS IN EXP

15 TABLE 20. MEAN FIRST FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS) AND REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS FOR EXP TABLE 21. MEAN FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS) AND REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS FOR EXP TABLE 22. MEAN TOTAL FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS) AND REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS FOR EXP TABLE 23. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS) AND REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS FOR EXP TABLE 24. MEAN TOTAL FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS) AND REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS FOR EXP TABLE 25. MEAN SECOND-PASS DURATIONS (IN MS) AND REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS FOR EXP TABLE 26. IMPLICIT CAUSALITY VERBS USED IN EXP. 6, 7 AND 8 WITH THEIR BIAS TABLE 27. MEAN SELF-PACED READING TIMES (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND MINF VALUES FOR EXP TABLE 28. MEAN FIRST FIXATION DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND MINF VALUES FOR EXP TABLE 29. MEAN FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND MINF VALUES FOR EXP TABLE 30. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND MINF VALUES FOR EXP TABLE 31. ADDITIONAL IMPLICIT CAUSALITY VERBS USED IN EXP. 8 WITH THEIR BIAS TABLE 32. MEAN FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 33. MEAN TOTAL FIRST GAZE DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP TABLE 34. MEAN REGRESSION PATH DURATIONS (IN MS), REPEATED MEASURES ANOVAS AND PAIRED-SAMPLE T-TESTS FOR EXP

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17 Acknowledgements Imagine that you are a young graduate student, with an interest in language comprehension processes. What kind of guidance would you need to obtain your master s degree and to complete a PhD-project in experimental psycholinguistics successfully? First of all, you need to get inspired, preferably by a talented and welltrained researcher, who shows you some of the do s and don ts of your future job as an AiO. Second, since your project has some important roots in (syntactic) linguistics, you need somebody to acquaint you with the terminology, frameworks and quirks of this unfamiliar scientific field. Finally, it would be ideal if you could also consult someone with extensive knowledge of both linguistics and psychology, to help you to keep these two ingredients of your project balanced. If you are fortunate enough to have bumped into all of these people, then your name must be Arnout. Eric Reuland was my syntactic supervisor, although I should add that he was much more than that. I sincerely doubt whether I will meet another person who will show such a genuine and broad interest in science, people, or just the funny quirks of life. Frank Wijnen was my keep it all together supervisor. He happens to know a lot about everything and as such was very important for me to keep it all together. I have also been extremely fortunate to have Jos van Berkum as a supervisor at the University of Amsterdam. He helped me to obtain my master s degree in Cognitive Psychology and, more importantly, inspired me to pursue a scientific carrier. What these three guys seem to have in common is that they never give you the impression that they are the professors and you are student. They just discuss matters as if you were a professor too (or as if they were students pick your favorite). Of course, in addition to Eric, Frank and Jos there are others who helped me in one way or another. In fact, the list that will follow below cannot possibly be exhaustive. So, to those among you who have been

18 left out yet are convinced that they should be mentioned I apologize and, furthermore, I show my appreciation to all these outcasts with one general thank you. I am grateful to my colleagues (or work-related friends) Nina Versteeg, Nada Vasić, Arjen Zondervan, Hannah De Mulder, Saskia de Leeuw, Sergey Avrutin, Pim Mak, Theo Veenkers, Mante Nieuwland, Marte Otten, Willemijn Heeren, Martin Everaert, Maaike Schoorlemmer, Ted Sanders, Gerben Mulder, Andrea Gualmini, Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Roberta Tedeschi, Oren Sadeh Leicht, Dimitra Papangeli and all my fellow-phd students who helped and supported me on this journey. A special thank you goes out to Iris Mulders who helped me set up the eye-tracking experiments and provided some important feedback on earlier versions of this dissertation. Another special thank you goes out to Jean Taylor for proofreading the entire (!) manuscript and commenting on my English. I certainly should not forget my friends Davy van der Elsken, Wouter Nieuwendijk, Jim Onverwagt, Roel van Goor, Ardan Aldershof, Janine de Jong and many others. They made sure I kept in contact with the real world and did not get lost somewhere between coreference and variable binding. Of course, I saved the best for last: my family. I m greatly indebted to my parents Hettie and Maarten. They have always supported me in every imaginable way and, perhaps more importantly, never pushed me into doing something I did not really want to do and they gave me a lot of money. Furthermore, I wish my little brother Joris all the best with his PhD project just watch him, he is going to be really big! You tend to see it in a lot of acknowledgement sections: the author has just written a book of some 300 pages, yet is lost for words when it comes to thanking his or her spouse. Being a (psycho)linguist it is especially difficult to acknowledge that I am one of those unfortunate authors. So, I keep it simple: Lies, you probably know how much I love you, but do you also know that I could not have done this without you? BUT, although it is certainly not my intention to trivialize the contribution of all those mentioned above, there is actually one very tiny person who inspired me in particular to finish this long endeavor in a reasonable timeframe. The funny thing is that I have only known her for a year-and-half, but apparently that is long enough to completely change your attitude towards a lot of things in life. Maartje, without you I sincerely doubt whether I would ever have finished this dissertation and,

19 therefore, I dedicate it to you. I hope you will read it someday probably not.

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21 CHAPTER 1 Anaphoric dependencies: A window into the architecture of the language system Introduction Linguists, psycholinguists and a virus For decades or even centuries people have thought and written extensively about the intriguing ability of human beings to use language to, sometimes very effectively, communicate with each other. Just to get an impression of how much language-related information is actually out there, I conducted a quick Google search. The results were overwhelming as the string language returned a dazzling 686 million hits. To get an idea of how much this really is, death will only give you 416 million hits and even s x does not reach the 500 million. However, the romantics among us will be pleased to hear that at least love is more important than language. In fact, only life itself returned more hits (1270 million!) than the astonishing 1040 million links to articles, songs, books, movies, websites and forums about love. Having said that, most of the information on the internet is of course in a written form and, even worse, you have to enter a word to initiate your search. Thus, in fact you need language to find love, which according to Jean Baudrillard will eventually create a huge problem as he has warned us that if you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity. 2 In other words, language will bring you love, but if you speak about it, the word itself will destroy the love just as a mistress would break up a marriage. 1 Eric Reuland (one of the supervisors of this dissertation) published an article under the same title (Reuland, 2003). Kindly enough he allowed me to commit plagiarism and recycle this enlightening title. 2 The citations in this section were found by surfing the internet. Since the primary sources were not consulted the exact formulation of Baudrillard, Whorf, Wittgenstein, Burroughs and Chomsky may have been slightly different.

22 22 CHAPTER 1 The mini experiment described above gives a striking example of how we are completely surrounded by language and Baudrillard s remark illustrates its potentially destructive power. Obviously, I am aware of the fact that searching the internet and counting the number of hits does not really tell you anything about language. Fundamental questions that keep some of us awake at night like how should we define language? and how do people process it?, remain unanswered. On the other hand, simply because almost every human being is constantly producing, processing, or blocking language in one way or another, we do all seem to share some sort of intuition about what language is. For instance, if you asked a stranger in the street to define human language, he or she could easily respond by saying something like oh that is easy, language is the way people communicate with each other, they talk about the world, share ideas, express inner thoughts, give instructions, make jokes and they can even talk to themselves without actually speaking (or get a life if you pose the question in a major city). This illustrates that people have the idea that language is mainly used to describe the world (to each other) and, furthermore, that there is a close relationship between language and thought. Many philosophers share this general intuition, although they sometimes take the importance of language even a step further. For instance, to quote Benjamin Lee Whorf: Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about. Thus, according to Whorf language defines our world and not the other way around. The famous Ludwig Wittgenstein framed the same idea in a poetic way by saying: The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. You may or may not agree with these views, at the very least they illustrate that language is regarded as a very important, and perhaps defining, characteristic of our species. Therefore, dissecting language is crucial if we want to get closer to understanding human behaviour. Before we turn to the contribution of this dissertation to the latter quest I have to mention that some among us are actually very pessimistic about what we will eventually learn about the nature of human language. For instance, according to Jean Baudrillard, our language hater, a perfect world is a speechless one because: