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Susceptibility to discourse/semantic factors: An experimental approach to short-distance pronouns and logophoric reflexives Elsi Kaiser, Jeffrey T. Runner, Rachel S. Sussman & Michael K. Tanenhaus University of Rochester
[email protected] Workshop on Semantic Approaches to Binding Theory ESSLLI, Nancy, August 2004 1. Introduction
We present two experiments testing (i) the idea that “source-of-information” referents can antecede BT-incompatible reflexives in picture-NPs (Kuno 1987), and (ii) the observation that “perceiver-ofinformation” referents can antecede BT-incompatible pronouns (see Tenny 2003). The results show that discourse/semantic factors interact with BT, but affect pronouns with local antecedents more than reflexives with non-local antecedents.
Structure of talk 1. Introduction 1.1 Basics of Binding Theory 1.2 Where standard Binding Theory runs into trouble 1.3 Focus of this talk: Picture-NPs 2. Experiment 1: Picture-choosing task 2.1 Predictions 2.2 Results 3. Experiment 2: Picture verification 3.1 Predictions 3.2 Results 3.3 Discussion of Experiments 1 and 2 4. Experiment 3: Eyetracking data (preliminary) 5. Conclusions
1.1 Basics of Binding Theory •
Pronominal and reflexive noun phrases in English have a nearly complementary distribution.
a. b. c. d.
Juliusi saw him*i/j. Juliusi saw himselfi/*j. Juliusi saw a picture of him*i/j. Juliusi saw a picture of himselfi/*j.
(1)
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Binding theory (BT): structural account of this complementarity (e.g. Chomsky 1981, 1986): A. An anaphor is bound in a local domain. B. A pronoun is free in a local domain. C. An R-expression is free. Binding: A binds B iff A c-commands B, and A and B are coindexed. C-command: A node A c-commands a node B iff the first branching node dominating A also dominates B, and A does not dominate B. (2) a. [Juliusi’ brother]j saw himselfj/*i. b. [Juliusi’ brother]j saw himi/*j.
1.2 Where traditional Binding Theory runs into trouble ‘Unexpected’ reflexives: (3) a. Bismarck’s impulsiveness has, as so often, rebounded against himself (him). (quoted in Zribi-Hertz 1989) b. Warren says it’s a good time to be an astrophysicist. Fifteen years ago, “we were starved for observations,” he says. Now it’s the opposite: Theorists like himself (him) are drowning in data from modern telescopes. (from The New Mexican newspaper in Santa Fe, NM, 6/28/04) c. It was a quiet time for visitors at the house, and there were only four others staying apart from myself (me). (www.dkfoundation.co.uk/FriendsFoundationChaliceWell.htm) ‘Unexpected’ pronouns: (4) a. Poor John. Now he's got an ambitious little snake next to him (himself). (www.freerepublic.com/~regulator/in-forum) b. Except he could not throw the ball because he was getting tackled. He was about to hit the ground. He had to do something else. He saw someone behind him (himself). He flipped the ball in desperation. (www.wildbillschiefs.com/news/data/604.txt)
In these contexts, what guides the choice of one form over the other? → The interpretation and acceptability of pronouns and reflexives can be modulated by pragmatic/semantic and discourse factors (e.g. Cantrall 1974, Kuno 1987, ZribiHertz 1989, Pollard & Sag 1992, Reinhart & Reuland 1993, Tenny 1996, Tenny 2003).
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1.3 Focus of this talk: Picture-NPs Juliannai saw a picture of heri/herselfi. Juliusi heard a story about himi/himselfi. •
[representational NPs]
A well-known case showing clear discourse/semantic effects for both pronouns and reflexives (e.g. Kuno 1987, Pollard & Sag 1992, Reinhart & Reuland 1993, Keller & Asudeh 2001, Tenny 2003).
a. Reflexives: o No purely structural theory of binding1 can capture the fact that the antecedent of a reflexive can occur in another sentence, yet (5a) is acceptable. Various pragmatic factors have a strong effect on the acceptability of this reflexive (compare to 5b). → Logophors (5) [examples from Pollard & Sag 1992] a. Johni was going to get even with Mary. [That picture of himi/himselfi] in the paper would really annoy her, as would the other stunts he had planned. b. Mary was quite taken aback by the publicity Johni was receiving. [That picture of himi/*himselfi] in the paper would really annoy her, as would the other stunts he had planned. •
Kuno (1987): Factors like point of view, awareness and semantic roles influence whether a given entity can act as the antecedent for a logophoric reflexive (see also Pollard & Sag 1992, Reinhart & Reuland 1993, many others).
•
Source: the one who is the intentional agent of the communication. (Sells 1987) o BT-violating reflexive can refer to sources
(5) c. John heard from Mary about a damaging rumor about ?herself/(?)her (that was going around). (Kuno 1987:175) b. Pronouns: o The pronouns in (6a,c) (examples based on Reinhart & Reuland 1993) should not be grammatical since they are c-commanded by a local antecedent. (6) a. Luciei saw the picture of heri. c. Maxi heard the story about himi.
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b.* Luciei took the picture of heri. d. * Maxi told the story about himi.
•
Tenny (2003): Calls these kinds of pronouns short-distance pronouns (SDPs) and notes that “verbs that provide a sentient, perceiving antecedent are especially conducive to SDPs”.
•
“….SDPs in representational contexts […..] are especially felicitous with perceiving subjects” (Tenny 2003).
Unless it takes into account discourse/pragmatic factors, but then it is no longer a purely structural approach.
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Experiments: - manipulate structural and pragmatic/semantic variables - collect a set of data from a large group of speakers - incremental, real-time information about interpretation In this talk, we present two psycholinguistic experiments that investigate the claims that (a) A referent which is a “source of information” (e.g. ‘John’ in ‘John told Bill about…’ and ‘Bill heard from John…’) can act as the antecedent for a BT-violating reflexive [Kuno] (b) ‘Perceiving’ antecedents (e.g. ‘Bill’ in ‘John told Bill…’ and ‘Bill heard from John…’) are good antecedents for SDPs [Tenny]. → In some sense, these claims are ‘two sides of the same coin’, since verbs like tell/hear involve both a source-of-information and a perceiver-of-information. Will BT-violating pronouns and reflexives have a complementary distribution? 2. Experiment 1: Picture-choosing task • • • •
Participants listened to sentences like (7) while looking at scenes containing the two mentioned referents as well as a picture of each referent Task: Choose the picture that is mentioned in the sentence; if not sure which one to choose, just to go with gut instinct/first guess. Factors: verb type (told/heard) and anaphoric form (himself/him), 4 conditions Half of items contained two male referents and half contained two female referents. 24 participants, 20 critical items.
(7) Peter {told/heard from} Andrew about the picture of {him/himself} on the wall.
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2.1 Predictions
Binding theory • A reflexive is bound by a local c-commanding antecedent (i) Peter told Andrew about the picture of himself on the wall. (ii) Peter heard from Andrew about the picture of himself on the wall. • A pronoun is free, i.e. not c-commanded by its local antecedent (i) Peter told Andrew about the picture of him on the wall. (ii) Peter heard from Andrew about the picture of him on the wall. [I will say more about the direction object/object of prepositional phrase difference later.]2 → BT alone predicts that differences in verb semantics don’t lead to differences in binding patterns.
Predictions for reflexives, based on Kuno and other discourse/semantic approaches: (i) Peter told Andrew about the picture of himself on the wall. {source} {subject} (ii) Peter heard from Andrew about the picture of himself on the wall. {subject} {source} •
Source-of-information influences whether a given entity can act as the antecedent for a logophoric reflexive → we predict that we should see more non-subject/logophoric responses with heard than with told.
Predictions for pronouns, based on Tenny: (iii) Peter told Andrew about the picture of him on the wall. {perceiver} {non-subject} (iv) Peter heard from Andrew about the picture of him on the wall. {perceiver} {non-subject} •
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‘Perceiving subjects’ are good antecedents for SDPs → we predict that there will be more subject responses with heard than with told
The prediction charts on the next page also oversimplify with respect to the c-command question. In order to make the predicted changes easier to represent, the graphs are drawn as if the object never c-commands the picture-NP. We will return to this issue in Section 3.3, but I put it aside here for reasons that will become clear once we look at the results.
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Note: All numbers in these prediction charts are of course entirely hypothetical!
Antecedent of reflexive
Binding Theory predictions: AntecedentofofBinding reflexive theory a. Predictions
Kuno-type predictions: Antecedent predictions of reflexive b. Kuno-type
100
100
80
80
60
60
subject
40
40
object
20
20
0
0
subject=source
subject=source
object=source
object=source
Antecedent of pronoun Binding Theory predictions: Antecedent of c. Predictions of Binding theory pronoun 100
subject
80 60
object
40 20 0 subject=perceiver
object=perceiver
Tenny-type predictions: Antecedent of pronoun d. Tenny-type predictions 100 80 60 40 20 0
subject=perceiver
object=perceiver
dir. object=perceiver (and c-commands)
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2.2 Results and discussion
referent chosen as antecedent (percentage)
What referent was chosen as the antecedent of the pronoun or the reflexive? 100 80 60
subject
40
object
20 0 told/reflex
heard from/reflex
told/pro
heard from/pro
Reflexive conditions: Overall preference to interpret the reflexive as referring to the subject: (i) told: 93% (ii) heard condition: 86% • •
A slight [but not significant] numerical effect of the verb manipulation in the direction predicted by Kuno’s claims (7% with heard, vs. 14% with told) People do sometimes interpret the reflexive in the picture NP in a BT-incompatible way, as referring to the object of heard (the source-of-information).
Pronoun conditions: • •
BT predicts that in both conditions, the pronoun should refer to the object. In light of Tenny’s work, we predict that we should see subject interpretations in the heard condition, where the subject is the perceiver-of-information.
•
A significant effect of the verb manipulation (p
