Previous research has shown that anaphor resolution in a non-native language may be more vulnerable to interference from structurally inappropriate antecedents compared to native anaphor resolution. To test whether previous findings on reflexive anaphors generalize to non-reflexive pronouns, we carried out an eye-movement monitoring study investigating the application of binding condition B during native and non-native sentence processing. In two online reading experiments we examined when during processing local and/or non-local antecedents for pronouns were considered in different types of syntactic environment. Our results demonstrate that both native English speakers and native German-speaking learners of English showed online sensitivity to binding condition B in that they did not consider syntactically inappropriate antecedents. For pronouns thought to be exempt from condition B (so-called “short-distance pronouns”), the native readers showed a weak preference for the local antecedent during processing. The non-native readers, on the other hand, showed a preference for the matrix subject even where local coreference was permitted, and despite demonstrating awareness of short-distance pronouns' referential ambiguity in a complementary offline task. This indicates that non-native comprehenders are less sensitive during processing to structural cues that render pronouns exempt from condition B, and prefer to link a pronoun to a salient subject antecedent instead.

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A number of recent studies have investigated how syntactic and non-syntactic constraints combine to cue memory retrieval during anaphora resolution. In this paper we investigate how syntactic constraints and gender congruence interact to guide memory retrieval during the resolution of subject pronouns. Subject pronouns are always technically ambiguous, and the application of syntactic constraints on their interpretation depends on properties of the antecedent that is to be retrieved. While pronouns can freely corefer with non-quantified referential antecedents, linking a pronoun to a quantified antecedent is only possible in certain syntactic configurations via variable binding. We report the results from a judgment task and three online reading comprehension experiments investigating pronoun resolution with quantified and non-quantified antecedents. Results from both the judgment task and participants' eye movements during reading indicate that comprehenders freely allow pronouns to corefer with non-quantified antecedents, but that retrieval of quantified antecedents is restricted to specific syntactic environments. We interpret our findings as indicating that syntactic constraints constitute highly weighted cues to memory retrieval during anaphora resolution.

Non-native speakers’ sensitivity to discourse-level cues in pronoun interpretation has not been widely researched. We carried out three antecedent-choice questionnaire experiments which investigate the impact of focus on within-sentence pronoun resolution in native and non-native speakers of German and native speakers of Russian. Focus was realized via cleft structures and focus-sensitive particles (FSPs). Findings show a clear difference between native and non-native speakers that is not attributable to first language (L1) influence. Native speakers of German and Russian were less likely to resolve the pronoun to an antecedent in focus via a cleft compared to a non-focused antecedent in the same position (the ‘anti-focus effect’). Unlike the native speakers, non-native speakers did not show an anti-focus effect with clefts but showed a tendency to resolve a pronoun to an antecedent appearing with an FSP. We argue that non-native speakers do not always complete a detailed analysis of the information structural cues when seeking an antecedent and may instead be influenced by surface-level cues that highlight certain antecedents.

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