Offline interpretation of subject pronouns by native speakers of Spanish

Abstract

Research on anaphora resolution reveals that speakers’ interpretation of pronominal subjects is often inconsistent, with results differing in terms of the antecedent preferences of these speakers and the factors that affect these preferences. The present study investigates anaphora resolution by native speakers of Spanish using an offline judgment task where participants are presented with globally ambiguous anaphora to test the predictions of Carminati’s (2002) Position of Antecedent Strategy (PAS) with Spanish intra-sentential Main-Subordinate anaphora. The results show that native speakers of Iberian Spanish have a clear preference for the object as the antecedent for the overt pronoun with this structure, while a preference for the subject as the antecedent for the null pronoun was not revealed. These findings appear to be at odds with the PAS and suggest that anaphora resolution is affected by clause order.

Keywords

• Anaphora resolution
• subject pronouns
• antecedent preferences
• Spanish
• offline interpretation