Pronoun production remains stable over the adult lifespan for contexts with topic continuity

A prevalent finding in the referential communication literature is that older adults produce more ambiguous pronouns than younger adults, likely because they have difficulty determining the prominence of referents. This finding has been widely understood to reflect a general age-related deficit in communication. However, all studies from this line of work have used materials involving topic shifts (i.e. when the to-be-named referent shifts from one character to another, which requires perspective-taking and can be cognitively costly). To determine the extent to which younger and older adults’ pronominal use diverges, we investigated whether other aspects of the discourse context influence age-related differences in referential choice, apart from topic shifts. Here we tested a large sample of adults (N=496, ages 18-82) using narrative elicitation tasks across four experiments and nine contexts of topic continuity (i.e. contexts in which the to-be-named referent remained the same). In Experiments 1 and 2, we varied the number of characters in the scene while keeping the sex/gender of the characters distinct and found that pronominal use did not differ by age for scenes with 1, 2, and 3 characters. In Experiments 3 and 4, we varied the number of characters, the sex/gender of those characters (such that they were the same or different), and the linguistic emphasis placed on the main character. Again, we found no age differences across all conditions. Taken together, our findings suggest that older adults’ difficulty with prominence estimates is not all- encompassing, but rather appears to be confined to contexts involving topic shifts.

ASL Production

Previous research has pointed at naturalness and communicative efficiency as possible constraints on language structure. Here, we investigated adjective position in American Sign Language (ASL), a language with relatively flexible word order, to test the incremental efficiency hypothesis, according to which both speakers and signers try to produce efficient referential expressions that are sensitive to the word order of their languages. The results of three experiments using a standard referential communication task confirmed that deaf ASL signers tend to produce absolute adjectives, such as color or material, in prenominal position, while scalar adjectives tend to be produced in prenominal position when expressed as lexical signs, but in postnominal position when expressed as classifiers. Age of ASL exposure also had an effect on referential choice, with early-exposed signers producing more classifiers than late-exposed signers. Overall, our results suggest that linguistic, pragmatic and developmental factors affect referential choice in ASL, supporting the hypothesis that communicative efficiency is an important factor in shaping language structure.

Microvariation in the division of labor between null- and overt-subject pronouns: the case of Italian and Spanish

In Italian, null pronouns are typically interpreted toward antecedents in a prominent syntactic position, whereas overt pronouns prefer antecedents in lower positions. Interpretation preferences in Spanish are less clear. While comprehension and production have never been systematically compared in Italian and Spanish, here we look at the preferences for overt- and null-subject pronouns in the two languages using the same production and comprehension materials. Using an offline comprehension task with a group of Spanish and Italian speakers, we tested sentences where the type of pronoun (null vs. explicit) and position of the pronoun (anaphoric vs. cataphoric) are manipulated, to determine how context affects speakers’ interpretations in the two languages. With two production tasks, we measured referential choice in controlled discourse contexts, linking the production patterns to the differences observed in comprehension. Our results indicate microvariation in the two null-subject languages, with Spanish following the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis but to a lesser degree than Italian. More specifically, in Spanish, the weaker object bias for overt pronouns parallels with a higher use of overt pronouns (and with fewer null pronouns) in contexts of topic maintenance.

Switch-reference and its role in referential choice in Mbyá Guaraní narratives

Switch-reference has been analyzed as a reference tracking mechanism, whose main function is to avoid ambiguity of reference. One domain where this function has been argued to manifest itself is referential choice. Kibrik (Kibrik, Andrej. 2011. Reference in discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press) notably proposed that switch-reference marking plays the role of a referential aid, which helps to prevent referential conflict, thereby enabling the production of reduced referential expressions such as pronouns and zeros. The present study probes this theory through an analysis of the role of switch-reference marking in multifactorial models of referential choice in Mbyá Guaraní. We show that while switch-reference increases the likelihood of mention reduction in Mbyá Guaraní, this effect is marginal relative to other predictors of referential choice. We argue that this result is compatible with the analysis of switch-reference as a referential aid, but also supports analyses that emphasize the multiplicity of its functions, beyond the disambiguation of reference.

Speakers use more redundant referents with language learners: Evidence for communicatively-efficient referential choice

According to the communicative efficiency hypothesis, speakers should produce more linguistic material when comprehension difficulty increases. Here, we investigate a potential source of comprehension difficulty – listeners’ language proficiency – on speakers’ productions, using referential choice as a case study. On the one hand, the extent to which referential choice is impacted by the listener is debated. On the other hand, referential choice is impacted by communicative efficiency: pronouns are used less than longer referring expressions for less predictable referents (Tily & Piantadosi, 2009). Here, we compare participants’ descriptions of the same picture book to children, adult L2 learners and adult native speakers. We find that speakers use longer references when their interlocutors are learners – child and adult learners alike, illustrating an effect of listeners’ proficiency (regardless of age) on production choices. Importantly, the effect is stronger for child learners, pointing to possible differences between speech directed to child and adult learners. We discuss implications for theories of language change.

Referential Choice in the Written Narratives of Indonesian Adults

This study aims to describe the referential choice of two protagonist animate characters in a silent six-minute film entitled The Pear Story (Chafe, 1980). A total of 80 undergraduate and graduate Indonesian students were asked to watch the film and then retell the story by writing a narrative about the film in Indonesian. Findings indicate that when the protagonist animate referents are mentioned for the first time, a classifier seorang ‘a person’ is always used before the NP. When they are reactivated, they are mostly expressed by zero, pronouns dia or ia ‘he’, clitic –nya ‘his’ or ‘him’, NPs with determiners ini ‘this’, itu ‘that’, tersebut ‘aforementioned’, tadi ‘mentioned before’, NPs with relative clauses and NPs with definite articles si or sang ‘the’ which are often used in fables or tales. This study also demonstrates that the choice of anaphoric expressions of the protagonists is determined by factors such as referential distance and referential interference. This study confirms other cross-linguistic studies about referential choice – that there is a correlation between salience and referring expressions in discourse. AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan penggunaan acuan untuk dua tokoh utama dalam film bisu berdurasi enam menit yang berjudul The Pear Story (Chafe, 1980). Sebanyak 80 mahasiswa Indonesia tingkat Strata 1 dan Pascasarjana di sebuah universitas swasta diminta untuk menonton film tersebut dan kemudian menuliskan narasi mengenai film itu dalam bahasa Indonesia. Data menunjukkan bahwa jika referen kedua tokoh utama tersebut disebutkan untuk pertama kalinya, bentuk leksikal seorang selalu muncul sebelum frasa nomina (FN). Jika referennya diaktifkan kembali, maka yang digunakan adalah zero, pronomina dia atau ia, klitik –nya, FN + ini/itu/tersebut/tadi, FN + klausa relatif, dan si/sang + FN. Penelitian ini juga menunjukkan bahwa pilihan bentuk anaforik untuk kedua tokoh utama itu ditentukan oleh faktor jarak antara referen dan anteseden dan juga oleh adanya interferensi referen. Hasil penelitian ini sejalan dengan penelitian lintas bahasa mengenai pilihan acuan, yaitu bahwa ada korelasi antara referen utama dan bentuk acuannya.

Referential choice in stories with characters of one or different genders: A study of monolingual Croatian speakers

During narration, speakers constantly choose appropriate referential forms (nominals or pronominals). Children may engage in this reference marking differently than adults. Discourse- or listener-oriented approaches make different predictions about referential behaviour in cognitively demanding situations: the first predicts a higher number of nominals; the second, a higher number of pronominals. The current study explores referential forms chosen by 50 children (6;0–6;11) and 50 adults, all monolingual speakers of Croatian, under the increased cognitive load of having to narrate a story from picture stimuli involving three characters of one or different genders. Generally, adults produce more referential expressions in their narratives. For both story types, children and adults use nominals more often than pronominals, children use a higher percentage of nominals than adults, and both groups use nouns to introduce and re-introduce characters. When maintaining characters in the narrative, both groups use more nouns and fewer pronouns in the story with characters of one gender, whereas they use fewer nouns and more pronouns in the story with characters of different genders. These findings suggest that Croatian monolingual adults and children more often use nominals for referencing in cognitively demanding stories, consistent with the discourse-oriented approach.

Bilingual referential choice in cognitively demanding situations

Under the Interface Hypothesis, bilinguals’ non-nativelike referential choices may be influenced by the increased cognitive demands and less automatic processing of bilingual production. We test this hypothesis by comparing pronoun production in the L2 of nonbalanced Spanish–English bilinguals to that of English monolinguals in two cognitively challenging contexts. In Experiment 1, both monolinguals and bilinguals produced more explicit references when part of the information was unavailable to their addressee (privileged ground) than when all information was shared (common ground), evidencing audience design. In Experiment 2, verbal load led to more unspecified references than visual load and no load (an effect statistically indistinguishable between groups but numerically driven by the monolingual group). While bilinguals produced overall more pronouns than monolinguals in both experiments, there was no indication that bilinguals’ referential choice was disproportionally affected by increased cognitive demand, contrary to the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis.