An experimental investigation of the binding options of demonstrative pronouns in German

Abstract

This paper discusses data from two self-paced reading experiments as well as an acceptability rating study that shed light on the binding behaviour of demonstrative pronouns as opposed to personal pronouns. Participants read (Experiments 1 & 2) or rated (Experiment 3) single sentences that contained either a demonstrative pronoun (DPro) or a personal pronoun (PPro). Sentences contained a determiner phrase (DP) that functioned as the grammatical subject and a DP that functioned as the direct, indirect or prepositional object. The pronoun was either contained in the direct object DP or a prepositional object DP. In half of the sentences, pronouns could only be interpreted as bound by the subject DP. In the other half of sentences, they could only be interpreted as bound by the object DP. Results from Experiment 1 reveal similar reading times for DPros and PPros when they were bound by the object DP, and significantly longer reading times for DPros than PPros when they were bound by the subject DP. Experiment 2 replicated the DPro effect from Experiment 1 with materials where potential subject and object binders were quantifiers. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that also in the context of quantifier binding DPros are not generally dispreferred. Sentences with a DPro were only rated as less acceptable than sentences with a PPro when the potential binder was the subject. Taken together, our data provide evidence that DPros can be bound as long as their binders are not grammatical subjects.

Keywords

• demonstrative pronouns
• binding
• grammatical subjects
• prominence