Semantic incorporation and discourse prominence : Experimental evidence from English pronoun resolution

Wittenberg, Eva; Trotzke, Andreas

Semantic incorporation and discourse prominence : Experimental evidence from English pronoun resolution

Dateien

Wittenberg_2-1v5xnguep11on2.pdfGröße: 638.47 KBDownloads: 135

Datum

2021

Publikationstyp

Zeitschriftenartikel

Publikationsstatus

Published

Erschienen in

Journal of Pragmatics. Elsevier. 2021, 186, pp. 87-99. ISSN 0378-2166. eISSN 1879-1387. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2021.09.019

Zusammenfassung

The semantic incorporation of nouns into predicates, like give a hug, is not morphologically marked in English, and how syntactic incorporation strategies like light verb constructions influence the discourse-prominence structure of an utterance has not yet been studied systematically. One hypothesis is that since semantically incorporated nouns are not morphosyntactically incorporated in English, they can function like any other noun as prominent and accessible referents for anaphora. Another hypothesis is that their semantic status and their predicative meaning influence their discourse prominence, and hence their accessibility by anaphoric means. We tested these two hypotheses in two experimental studies on different anaphoric preferences of English pronouns. Our studies demonstrate that the felicity patterns for the two different pronominal reference strategies are determined at different linguistic levels: For it, we found an impact of morphosyntactic form; for that, the semantic type of the referent (object vs. event) seems to play a role. Crucially, the degree of semantic incorporation does not affect discourse prominence and pronoun choice to the extent that we had expected.

Fachgebiet (DDC)

400 Sprachwissenschaft, Linguistik

Schlagwörter

Event reference, Object reference, Anaphor, Demonstrative pronouns, Light verb constructions, Pronoun resolution, Semantic incorporation, Noun incorporation, Discourse prominence, Forced-choice task

Zitieren

ISO 690

WITTENBERG, Eva, Andreas TROTZKE, 2021. Semantic incorporation and discourse prominence : Experimental evidence from English pronoun resolution. In: Journal of Pragmatics. Elsevier. 2021, 186, pp. 87-99. ISSN 0378-2166. eISSN 1879-1387. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2021.09.019

BibTex

@article{Wittenberg2021-12Seman-55325,
  year={2021},
  doi={10.1016/j.pragma.2021.09.019},
  title={Semantic incorporation and discourse prominence : Experimental evidence from English pronoun resolution},
  volume={186},
  issn={0378-2166},
  journal={Journal of Pragmatics},
  pages={87--99},
  author={Wittenberg, Eva and Trotzke, Andreas}
}

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