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Computational Approaches to Reference: Lecture 2 - More on the Interpretation of Anaphora

This lecture explores the interpretation of anaphora in familiarity-based theories, focusing on the identification of appropriate discourse entities in context. It also discusses discourse models, constraints in anaphora interpretation, and methods for pronominal interpretation.

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Computational Approaches to Reference: Lecture 2 - More on the Interpretation of Anaphora

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  1. Gundel & Poesio - Computational Approaches to Reference Massimo Poesio (University of Essex) Lecture 2: More on the Interpretation of Anaphora Psychological Evidence LSA Summer School

  2. A quick recap / clarification re: interpreting referring expressions • In FAMILIARITY-BASED theories such as ‘Vanilla DRT’, each type of referring expression assumed to EITHER always introduce a new discourse entity (INDEFINITES) or to always require an appropriate discourse entity to be found in context to provide the interpretation (DEFINITES) • In this course we will mostly focus on nominals usually classified as DEFINITES, but we are NOT assuming familiarity as the defining feature of definiteness – we only take it to be an important property of many definites • Nevertheless, we will mostly be concerned with methods to identify the `appropriate discourse entity in context’, if one is there – I.e., on FAMILIAR, ACTIVATED and IN-FOCUS entities • Except for definite descriptions (W3, L1) LSA Summer School

  3. Today’s lecture • Discourse models • Constraints and preferences in anaphora interpretation • The time course of anaphora interpretation • (If time allows) Commonsense- and recency- based methods for pronominal interpretation LSA Summer School

  4. Interpreting referring expressions • Interpreting (‘resolving’) a referring expressions involves at least three steps: • Deciding whether it refers to a familiar discourse entity, or whether it introduces a new discourse entity • If it’s familiar, identifying its antecedent (possibly not introduced by a nominal) • Determining its meaning (identity of sense vs. identity of reference) (These three steps not necessarily taken in this order) LSA Summer School

  5. Massimo Poesio: Use classic examples from Webber / Karttunen The Antecedents of Anaphoric Expressions: Discourse Comprehension and Context • Interpreting anaphoric expressions requires keeping track of antecedents available in context: • A man and a woman entered the room. The man sat down. (Anaphora) • John got home. He was feeling very tired. (Anaphora) • The ship came into the harbour. It docked. (Temporal order) • Context contains more than just objects which are mentioned: • John bought a new car. The engine needed tuning. (Clark, 1977) • When Ross visited his Aunt Cecily, they spent the afternoon talking. Then, as arranged, Nadia arrived. Ross kissed his aunt good-bye, and set off with Nadia to the discotheque, where they danced the night away. (Hirst, 1981) LSA Summer School

  6. The Discourse Model as a separate level of representation • Entities introduced in discourse model do not necessarily denote anything ‘in the real world’: • We don’t have a car, which is a shame, because we could really use ?it / one. • If I had a DVD reader, I could use it to play movies on my notebook. • Arguments in linguistics and CL literature: Karttunen 1967, 1976; Webber, 1978; Kamp and Reyle, 1993. LSA Summer School

  7. Massimo Poesio: Best discussion of these issues: Fletcher 1994Need to look at Kintsch and van Dijk, as well?Check Stavroula’s referencesThis should become ‘varieties of discourse models’ without mentioning psych Discourse Models in the Psychological Literature: A History • Context as list of structural representations • s-structures: many AI algorithms (e.g., Hobbs) • d-structures (Miller; Fodor, Bever, and Garrett, 1974) • Propositional Representations (Kintsch and van Dijk, 1978; Clark and Sengul, 1979) • Context = list of propositions (possibly hierarchically structured) • Motivations: Lesgold 1972, Ratcliff and McKoon 1978, Clark and Sengul’s experiments, among others • Bransford and Franks, 1971; Bransford, Barclay, and Franks, 1972; Barclay, 1973: mental models • Subjects perform additional inferences which seem to be based on their building a model of the situation • Johnson-Laird, 1983; van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983: • Context = Mental models + linguistic representations LSA Summer School

  8. Background: Self-paced reading experiments • Clark and Sengul 1979 are example of self-paced reading study • In this type of studies, the subjects read text by pressing a button so that parts of the text are displayed on a computer screen • The computer measures the time between button presses • Variants: • Amount of text displayed: a whole sentence (as in Clark and Sengul’s experiment), a clause (e.g., Stevenson Crawley and Kleinman 1994, tomorrow), a single word • Display can be cumulative, or each press can completely replace previous text • Etc. LSA Summer School

  9. Massimo Poesio: Main point: antecedent much faster when in context 3 than in 2 or 1 In fact, this has more to do with local focus / global focus separation than propositional vs. situational (perhaps Lesgold 1972 would have been better!) Context as an ordered list: Clark and Sengul’s experiments • Subjects read a context with three sentences, and a target sentence containing a reference to an entity mentioned in context sentence 1, 2 or 3 (pronoun or noun) • Example: The campers erected a shelter of lightweight plastic in the clearing. They piled a supply of dry wood next to a tree. The smell of coffee mingled with smoke from the campfire. TARGET2: The tree was an enormous redwood. • Results: • Significant effect of distance: F’=18.99, p < .001 LSA Summer School

  10. The problem with ‘purely structural’ views of context • The discourse model must clearly contain SOME syntactic information: • At least agreement information • Jane blamed Bill because he spilt the coffee • ‘Parallelism’ effects suggest that some structural information is available, too • But clearly anaphora resolution cannot be simply a matter of copying structural information: • Bach-Peters sentences • The pilot that shot at it hit the Mig that chased him. • Webber: • John gave Mary five dollars. It was more than he gave Sue. • John gave Mary five dollars. One of them was counterfeit. LSA Summer School

  11. Bransford, Barclay, and Franks, 1972 CONTEXT: Three turtles rested on a floating log and a fish swam beneath them. (a): Three turtles rested beside a floating log, and a fish swam beneath it. (b): Three turtles rested on a floating log and a fish swam beneath it. Result: correctly rejected (a) but accepted (b) LSA Summer School

  12. Massimo Poesio: Some of these inferences could be performed with propositional representations, as well (in fact, this might be what Haviland claimed?). Indeed, Frazier claims just that. Mental models • These experiments suggested that contexts are not simply lists of propositions, but that these propositions are somehow ‘merged’ to create `world-like’ representations • Johnson-Laird, 1983: While processing, humans construct representations of worlds/ situations related (identical with?) those built from perception • Reasoning is reasoning with these representations LSA Summer School

  13. Some preliminary considerations • Some of the discussion concerning the supposed dichotomy between ‘propositional representations’ and `mental models’ appears to reflect a misunderstanding about reasoning: • No reason in principle why a human subject, given a propositional representation of the facts about turtles & logs, & knowledge about spatial relationships, shouldn’t be able to (defeasibly) make additional inferences & conclude that the fish is under the log. This fact would ALSO be represented in propositional format • In fact, in most modern logic we have an equivalence between ‘syntactic’ inference and ‘semantic’ inference • In order to argue for a ‘situational’ representation, one has to argue that the inferences that take place are very idiosyncratic (difficult to prove) LSA Summer School

  14. Massimo Poesio: Point here: both the ‘propositional’ and the ‘situational’ view of context are merged in DRT& similar formalisms A formal discourse model: Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp and Reyle, 1993) A man and a woman entered the room. The man sat down. M W Y Z E X S man(M) woman(W) room(Z) Y = M+W E: entered(Y,Z) man(X) S: sat-down(X) X = M LSA Summer School

  15. Massimo Poesio: Check Fletcher 1994 though – he does seem to believe that there is evidence for spatial arrangement! (E.g., Mani and Johnson-Laird) DRT vs Mental Models Theory • DRT can be viewed as a formalization of mental models • Advantages: • Propositional / mental model distinction disappears • More precise theories of the meaning of anaphoric expressions and of semantic composition • Differences: • Inference in mental models is not classical • But: unclear whether mental models really have ‘spatial’ structure LSA Summer School

  16. Massimo Poesio: Another advantage of linguistic representations of discourse models Semantics of anaphoric expressions • Psychological work often unclear about the precise interpretation of certain anaphoric expressions; even more so about how this interpretation is compositionally derived. • Some of them (eg., Garnham; Sanford) now rely on ideas from formal semantics • Simplifying assumptions: ignore sense anaphora; uniform treatment of bound and referring anaphora a la DRT LSA Summer School

  17. Massimo Poesio: Although formal semantics very explicit about meaning of AE after resolution, not always very clear about their lexical meaning. Here, simplifying assumption. Anaphoric expressions in DRT M W Y Z E X S man(M) woman(W) room(Z) Y = M+W E: entered(Y,Z) man(X) S: sat-down(X) X = ? LSA Summer School

  18. Massimo Poesio: First step: find the antecedents. Discourse model our search space. If we really keep all the antecedents in the discourse model … The Hodja was walking home when a man came up behind him and gave him a thump on the head. When the Hodja turned round, the man began to apologize, saying that he had taken him for a friend of his. The Hodja, however, was very angry at this assault upon his dignity, and dragged the man off to court. It happened, however, that his assailant was a close friend of the cadi [magistrate], and after listening to the two parties in the dispute, the cadi said to his friend: “You are in the wrong. You shall pay the Hodja a farthing damages.” His friend said that he had not that amount of money on him, and went off, saying he would get it. Hodja waited and waited, and still the man did not return. When an hour had passed, the Hodja got up and gave the cadi a mighty thump on the back of his head. “I can wait no longer”, he said. “When he comes, the farthing is yours.” (From Downing, Tales of the Hodja, 1964 (reported in Hirst (1981))) LSA Summer School

  19. Massimo Poesio: Point: all antecedents accessed Marslen-Wilson, 1975: interpretation as a parallel process that simultaneously exploits info at all levels This effect of ambiguity may be worth mentioning as one of the factors affecting the choice of expression in Lec 2 (as done by Ariel) Probe (Karen, Emily) Karen poured a drink for Emily and then {Karen, she} put the bottle down. Yet, all (or at least a ‘currently salient subset’) are accessed in parallel • Corbett and Chang, 1983: all antecedents of a pronoun are accessed • Tanenhaus et al, 1995: all antecedents of a definite description referring to a visual situation are accessed • As a result, the more ambiguous, the slower (Fredriksen, 1981; Garnham, 1989) • Same results obtained for other aspects of semantic interpretation, such as word sense disambiguation (e.g., Swinney, 1979) LSA Summer School

  20. Massimo Poesio: Perhaps skip this? Explicit vs. non explicit antecedents • The easier it is to identify the antecedent, the quicker the anaphor is processed • E.g., Haviland and Clark 1974: anaphors with explicit antecedents easier to process • But cfr. results on UNHERALDED PRONOUNS (= no explicit antecedent) (Greene, Gerrig, McKoon and Ratcliff, 1994) • Also cfr. Garrod and Sanford 1982 ‘drive’ examples (Garrod and Sanford 1994, Garnham) • Also, Garrod and Sanford, 1977: when anaphor more removed from antecedent, slower (the tank / the vehicle vs. the car / the vehicle) LSA Summer School

  21. Massimo Poesio: Need to rethink this discussion a bit This should just become the beginning of ‘interpreting anaphoric expressions’, continuing into incrementality and parallelism E.g., discuss more linguistic evidence such as proposals by Linde (1979) and Passonneau (1993) that ‘that’ signals transitions; and similar proposals by Fox (1984) (see p. 15 of Rosemary’s new version of chapter 6) before discussing the psych evidence, and ONLY THEN go on to Gundel et al’s hierarchy and Grosz and Sidner’s claim Clearly, the search for antecedents is not a simple matter of finding the one antecedent that matches. Factors that play a role in antecedent search: form of anaphoric expression (`bottom-up strategies’) • Contrasts like the following suggest that the type of anaphoric expression determines the search procedure: • Keith drove to London yesterday. The car kept breaking down. • Keith drove to London yesterday. ?? It kept breaking down. • Or Partee classic ‘marble’ example: • I dropped ten marbles and found nine of them. • ?? It is probably under the sofa. • The missing marble is probably under the sofa. LSA Summer School

  22. Massimo Poesio: First item based on discussion by Garnham, p. 87 Add discussion of Vonk Hustinx and Simons 1992? (cfr. Rosemary’s version of chapter 6, p. 16-17) Check Garrod’s paper Plus evidence supporting claim that pronouns and definite descriptions interpreted differently? Fletcher, 1984; Marslen-Wilson and Tyler, 1982? (reference by Gordon et al 1993) Or put that together with focusing? Evidence suggesting that different NPs are interpreted in a different way • The time it takes to resolve pronouns and definite descriptions depends on the number of antecedents (Fredriksen, 1981; Garnham, 1989); this is not the case with proper names (Gordon et al, 1999) • The experiments by Garrod, Freudenthal and Boyle (1994) suggest that definite descriptions and proper names are always resolved, but pronouns sometimes aren’t (similar claims made by Green, McKoon, and Ratcliff, 1992) LSA Summer School

  23. Theoretical accounts of the role of the type of referring expression • Grosz and Sidner (1986): pronoun antecedents founds in the LOCAL FOCUS, antecedents of full NPs in the GLOBAL FOCUS (see Clark and Sengul, 1979; next week?) • Gundel Hedberg and Zacharski (1993): GIVENNESS HIERARCHY (discussed on Monday): • It, he, she: IN FOCUS • This, That, This N: ACTIVATED • That N: FAMILIAR • Definite descriptions: UNIQUELY IDENTIFIABLE • A N: IDENTIFIABLE • For the moment, we concentrate on PRONOUNS (some of the notions discussed play a role for other expressions as well – cfr. Sidner 1979). More on definites in Week 3. LSA Summer School

  24. Massimo Poesio: The discussion of factors go into separate point? E.g., with non-salience based methods? Or separate chapter? Factors that play a role in pronoun interpretation • `Constraints’ vs. ‘Preferences’ • Constraints: • Morphological information (gender, number, case) • Syntactic information (e.g., binding ) • Semantic information (cfr. DRT) • Preferences: • Commonsense knowledge • Syntactic preferences (e.g., subject assignment, parallelism – tomorrow) • Discourse factors? (tomorrow, rest of the week) • Classification into ‘constraints’ and `preferences’ not always very easy LSA Summer School

  25. Massimo Poesio: Rosemary’s notes in chapter 6: use of gender info depends on task (not used if only sentence comprehension tested) Gender and pronouns: psych evidence • Ehrlich, 1980: interpretation is faster when gender disambiguates • Jane blamed Bill because he spilt the coffee. • John blamed Bill because he spilt the coffee • Corbett and Chang 1983: both antecedents still activated at the end of the sentence only when gender doesn’t disambiguate • Garnham, Oakhill, Ehrlich, and Carreiras: effects are equally rapid in languages with ‘semantic’ gender (such as English) and in languages with ‘syntactic’ gender (Italian, Spanish, French) • Cacciari, Carreiras, and Cionini: in Italian, pronouns referring to EPICENES – words that can refer to individuals of either gender (‘la vittima’) - interpreted more quickly if match the gender (‘la donna / la vittima’ vs. `l’uomo/ la vittima’) LSA Summer School

  26. But … • Effect of gender less strong when it conflicts with other strong preferences • E.g., Caramazza et al, 1977; Ehrlich 1980 (faster with he than with she) Steven blamed Jane because he/she spilled the coffee LSA Summer School

  27. Massimo Poesio: Note that these experiments are not exactly about constraints, but about the effect of plural form on search Number • Garrod and Sanford (1982): singular and plural pronouns referring to conjuncts interpreted equally easily in subject position, but plurals interpreted more easily in object position: • It was a fine Saturday morning. • John and Mary went into town. • She / they / Mary wanted some new clothes. • The shop attendant told her / them / Mary to wait. • Gordon, Hendrick, Ledoux and Yang (1999): plural pronouns referring to antecedents introduced by conjunct interpreted more easily than singular pronoun referring to either conjunct: • Pam and Stan asked the usherette for assistance. • She / they quickly followed the usherette to their seats. LSA Summer School

  28. Binding Constraints • Lees and Klima (1963), Langacker (1969), Lasnik (1976), Reinhart (1976, 1983), Chomsky (1981, 1986): syntactic constraints limit intrasentential anaphoric relations • The Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981): • Principle A: anaphors (= reflexives) must have an antecedent in their governing category • Principle B: pronouns cannot have an antecedent in their governing category • Principle C: R-expressions (PNs, etc) must be free everywhere Bill Clinton hates him Bill Clinton hates himself *Bill Clinton hates him LSA Summer School

  29. Massimo Poesio: Check Gordon and Hendrick Binding constraints: evidence • Nicol and Swinney (1989): a cross-modal priming experiment • Associates of ‘boxer’, ‘skier’ and ‘doctor’ presented after anaphors • Priming only for words consistent with binding theory • Gordon and Hendrick (1997): • Good evidence that reflexives and pronouns are in complementary distribution (as predicted) • John met John’s roommates at the restaurant. • John’s roommates met John at the restaurant. • He met John’s roommates at the restaurant. • His roommates met John at the restaurant. The boxer told the skier that the doctor for the team would blame himself for the recent injury. The boxer told the skier that the doctor for the team would blame him for the recent injury. LSA Summer School

  30. Massimo Poesio: No evidence? X Y W Z Man(X) Donkey(Y) Owns(X,Y) W=X Z=Y Beats(W,Z) X Y W Z Man(X) Donkey(Y) Owns(X,Y) W=X Z=Y Beats(W,Z) Semantic constraints • Scope limits accessibility: • If a man owns a donkey, he beats it. • *If every man owns a donkey, he beats it. LSA Summer School

  31. Preferences, I: Commonsense knowledge • Sidner (1979): • The city council refused the women a permit because they feared violence. • The city council refused the women a permit because they advocated violence • BRISBANE – a terrific right rip from Hector Thompson dropped Ross Eadie at Sandgate on Friday night and won him the Australian welterweight boxing title. (Hirst, 1981) • Ellipsis (Hirst, 1981) • Ross loves his wife and Daryel does too • Nadia is able to twitch her nose and Ross is too. LSA Summer School

  32. Massimo Poesio: Check McKoon and Ratcliff Inference in anaphora resolution • Haviland and Clark 1974: best-known evidence of backward inference • Garrod and Sanford 1981, etc: it takes longer to process a bird .. the robin than a robin … the bird or a bird .. the bird • Central question in psychological literature: is there any clear evidence for forward inference? • Bradford et al: inferences really carried out right away? • McKoon & Ratcliff 1992 ‘minimalist theory of inference’? • Do not infer broom from sweep the yard • Corbett and Dosher: ‘shovel’ good cue for ANY sentence involving digging a hole (even if digging with a pitchfork) We got some beer out of the trunk. The beer was warm. We checked the picnic supplies. The beer was warm. LSA Summer School

  33. Massimo Poesio: Move this AFTER discussing commonsense-based knowledge? (Or at least, after discussing disamb factors?) Context also includes `linguistic’ information • The previous discussion suggests that context must include (at least provisionally) some linguistic information as well: • E.g., gender for pronouns • “la table” <- “elle” • “le meuble” <- “il” • Or memory of antecedents for ellipsis: • John has spoken to Mary, and Bill has too LSA Summer School

  34. Mental Models + Linguistic representations • Johnson-Laird, 1983;Kintsch and van Dijk, 1983: • Mental models + linguistic representation • Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983: understanding a discourse results in three distinct ‘memory traces’: • The SURFACE FORM • The PROPOSITIONAL TEXT BASE • The SITUATION MODEL • See also Grosz and Sidner, 1986: • `Linguistic level’ • Intentional level • Attentional level LSA Summer School

  35. M W Y Z E U7 U5 U6 man(M) woman(W) room(Z) Y = M +W E: entered(Y,Z) U1 U2 U3 U4 CRT (Poesio, 1991, 1994; Poesio and Traum, 1997) U1 U2 U3 U4 U5 U6 U7 CE1 K1 U1: utter(A,”a man”) Syn(U1) = [cat=NP,num=sg] Generate(U7,CE1) CE1: assert(A,K) K1 = LSA Summer School

  36. Massimo Poesio: See also: SDRT M W Y Z E U10 man(M) woman(W) room(Z) Y = X+W E: entered(Y,Z) U8 U9 X S man(X) S: sat-down(X) X = M K2 = CRT (Poesio, 1991, 1994; Poesio and Traum, 1997) U1 U2 U3 U4 U5 U6 U7 CE1 K1 U8 U9 U10 CE2 K2 ……… K1 = U8: utter(A,”the man”) Syn(U8) = [cat=NP,num=sg] Generate(U10,CE2) CE2: assert(A,K2) elaboration(CE1,CE2) LSA Summer School

  37. Massimo Poesio: Skip unless lots of time How long do these linguistic representations last? • Sacks, 1967; Jarvella, 1971: short-lived • Jarvella 1971: while current sentence is readily available for verbatim recall, sentence one back is no • But others (e.g., Kintsch and Bates, 1977) later showed that the representation of at least some sentences in short-term memory includes at least some surface information • Discussion in Fletcher, 1994 LSA Summer School

  38. Massimo Poesio: In book, we may have a discussion of ‘structure in discourse models’ in chap anaphora mentioning theories of discourse structure motivated by work on recall and memory, and then a discussion of claims like Grosz’ and Reichman’s that discourse structure affects salience in chap salience The discussion should include material from Gordon survey, including discussion of `event based’ models of structure like story grammars, Kintsch and van Dijk, and perhaps causal networks; and maybe also mention alternative of ‘intentional models’ Context also contains: discourse structure • Meyer, 1975, Kintsch and van Dijk 1978: • Subordination relations affect recall • Stevenson, Crawley and Kleinman, 1994: rhetorical relations affect salience (on Wed) • Kintsch and van Dijk, 1978; Stevenson et al, 2000: parts of discourse model connected by referential and rhetorical relations • CAUSAL RELATIONS: • The stone hit the window. It broke. • Can be represented in DRT • `TRUE’ RHETORICAL RELATIONS (e.g., EVIDENCE) • Connors used kevlar sails. I read it in The Guardian. • Other extensions of DRT provide this (e.g., SDRT – Asher, 1993; Asher and Lascarides, 1998) LSA Summer School

  39. We will mostly ignore these complexities … • And assume a vanilla DRT notion of discourse model unless necessary LSA Summer School

  40. Massimo Poesio: Check Marslen-Wilson 1975 The time-order of sentence processing • GARDEN-PATH phenomena shows that parsing is INCREMENTAL • The horse raced past the barn fell (Bever, 1974) • Frazier and Rayner, 1982: (encounter difficulty with second, but not first) • Marslen-Wilson 1973, 1975: semantic information ALSO accessed immediately • Swinney, 1979: lexical access incremental • Just and Carpenter,1980: IMMEDIACY HYPOTHESIS “Every word encountered should be processed to the deepest level possible before the eye moves on to the next word” Sam loaded the boxes on the cart … BEFORE LUNCH / ONTO THE VAN LSA Summer School

  41. Massimo Poesio: Add Dilbert? Else, Woodehouse examples from Caroline Hobbs example n ot terribly convincing The time course of anaphoric processing • Anaphoric garden-paths are also possible • If an incendiary bomb drops near you, don’t lose your head. Put it in a bucket and cover it with sand. • Hobbs, 1974: effect of ellipsis (but evidence ???) • Just and Carpenter (1977), Ehrlich (1980), Gernsbacher (1989): pronoun interpretation is INITIATED when the pronoun is encountered. • Empirical evidence that definite descriptions are interpreted incrementally: the experiments of Tanenhaus et al (1995) My uncle doesn’t have a spouse, but your aunt does, and he is lying on the floor. LSA Summer School

  42. Incrementality in definite descriptions: Tanenhaus et al (1995) • Pick up the red triangle that is below the green circle LSA Summer School

  43. Massimo Poesio: Notice that there is a contradiction here with earlier claim that it took longer to process ambiguous expressions – unless we claim that this type of expressions are treated differently!) Underspecification in syntactic processing • Frazier and Rayner, 1987: cases of local syntactic ambiguity that do not trigger immediate commitment (subjects spend more time fixating unambiguous examples than ambiguous ones) I know that the DESERT TRAINS young people to be especially though I know that the DESERT TRAINS are especially though on young people I know that THIS desert trains young people to be especially though I know that THESE desert trains are especially though on young people LSA Summer School

  44. Underspecification in semantic processing • Frazier and Rayner, 1990 After they were scratched, the records were closely guarded. After the takeover, the records were closely guarded. The records were closely guarded after they were scratched. The records were closely guarded after the takeover. Lying in the rain, the newspaper was destroyed. Managing advertising so poorly, the newspaper was destroyed. Unfortunately the newspaper was destroyed, lying in the rain.Unfortunately the newspaper was destroyed, managing advertising so poorly. LSA Summer School

  45. The `Moses Effect’ • This book fills a much-needed gap(Johnson-Laird, 1981) • No head injury is too small to be ignored. (Wason and Reich, 1979) • How many animals of each sort did Moses put on the ark? (Erickson and Mattson, 1981) • Barton and Sanford (1993): • There was a tourist flight travelling from Vienna to Barcelona. On the last leg of the journey, it developed engine trouble. Over the Pyrenees, the pilot started to lose control. The plane eventually crashed right on the border. Wreckage was equally strewn in France and Spain. The authorities where trying to decide where to bury the survivors. What is the solution to this problem? LSA Summer School

  46. Massimo Poesio: Gordon and Scearce seem to show that in some cases at least pronouns ARE resolved immediately, even in same-gender contexts: because more evidence? With full names: non-antecedent deactivated immediately after the anaphor is processed With pronouns: non-antecedent deactivated only at the end of the sentence Pronouns: begin immediately, possibly delay • Gernsbacher (1989), extending work by Corbett and Chang (1983) • Garrod and Sanford (1985): spelling error detection task • With proper names and definite descriptions: subjects take longer to detect spelling error with inconsistent verb • With pronouns: delayed recognition effect only with pronouns referring to ‘thematic subject’ of passage • Garrod, Freudenthal and Boyle (1993): eye-tracking study • Bill handed John some tickets to a concert but {Bill / he} took the tickets back immediately. • Ann predicted that Pam would lose the track race, but {Pam / she} came in first very easily. LSA Summer School

  47. Garrod and Sanford, 1985 • A dangerous incident at the pool • Elizabeth was an inexperienced swimmer and wouldn’t have gone in if the male lifeguard hadn’t been standing by the pool. But as soon as she got out of her depth she started to panic and was her hands about in a frenzy. • Within seconds Elizabeth senk (sank) into the pool. • Within seconds Elizabeth jimped (jumped) into the pool. • Within seconds the lifeguard senk into the pool. • Within seconds the lifeguard jimped into the pool. • Within seconds she / he senk into the pool. • Within seconds she/ he jimped into the pool. LSA Summer School

  48. Garrod, Freudenthal & Boyle, 1994 Elizabeth1/(Alexander1) was an inexperienced swimmer and wouldn’t have gone in if the male lifeguard2 hadn’t been standing by the pool. But as soon as she/(he) got out of her/(his) depth she/(he) started to panic and wave her hands about in a frenzy….. (1)Within seconds she1 sank1 into the pool (+Focus+Gender) (2)Within seconds she1jumped2into the pool (3)Within seconds he1 sank1 into the pool (+Focus-Gender) (4)Within seconds he1jumped2 into the pool (5)Within seconds he2jumped2 into the pool (-Focus+Gender) (6)Within seconds he2sank1 into the pool LSA Summer School

  49. Garrod et al. (1994) Findings • Immediate Focus/Gender mismatch effect, so gender has an immediate effect (Bonding, Sanford et al. ‘83: Garrod & Terras, 2000) • But resolution is delayed except when Gender and Focus jointly identify pronoun antecedent LSA Summer School

  50. Arnold, Eisenband et al (2000) Donald is bringing some mail to {Mickey/Minnie} (He’s sauntering down the hill, ) While a violent storm is beginning. He’s/She’s carrying an umbrella….. LSA Summer School

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