Contrastive Stress and Children's Interpretation of Pronouns

Misleading Bias-Driven Expectations in Referential Processing and the Facilitative Role of Contrastive Accent

“…Indeed, the findings presented here suggest that prosody can play a facilitative role in the process of reference resolution as previously shown with NP anaphors (Arnold, 2008;Brown-Schmidt et al, 2005;Dahan et al, 2002;Eberhard et al, 1995;Ito & Speer, 2008;Sedivy et al, 1999;Venditti et al, 2003;Weber et al, 2006) and pronominal anaphors (Brown-Schmidt et al, 2005;Cowles et al, 2007;Solan, 1980;Taylor et al, 2009;Venditti et al, 2001Venditti et al, , 2002Venditti et al, 2003). As demonstrated with sluicing sentences ) and cleft structures (Cowles et al, 2007), here too, accenting a potential antecedent's name influenced the interpretation of an anaphor appearing downstream.…”

“…When the pronoun is not accented, it refers to the subject NP (NP1) but when it is accented, it is said to refer to the object NP (NP2). Emerging 2 Capital letters signify an accented word 9 evidence suggests that accenting the pronoun in such cases can indeed modulate the referential interpretation of pronouns (Brown-Schmidt et al, 2005;Solan, 1980;Taylor et al, 2009;Venditti et al, 2001Venditti et al, , 2002Venditti et al, 2003). In the context of IC biases, the effect of accent on the pronoun itself does not seem to have a straight forward effect; in our previous study accenting the pronoun was not interpreted as contradicting the bias of the IC verb.…”

“…Eye fixations converged on the target object faster when the adjective, which already provided contrastive information, was also accented (relative to when it was unaccented). George can lead to a change in referent (Akmajian & Jackendoff, 1970;De Hoop, 2004;Kameyama, 1999;Oehrle, 1979;Smyth, 1994;Solan, 1980;Taylor, Stowe, Redeker, & Hoeks, 2009;Venditti, Stone, Nanda, & Tepper, 2001Venditti et al, 2003). When the pronoun is not accented, it refers to the subject NP (NP1) but when it is accented, it is said to refer to the object NP (NP2).…”

Is there really an asymmetry in the acquisition of the focus-to-accentuation mapping?

“…Regarding pronominal disambiguation, Solan (1980) found that 5-year-olds failed to understand the interaction between emphatic accentuation and pronouns when acting out with toys sentences like The camel hit the lion and then HE hit the elephant. McDaniel and Maxfield (1992) reported similar findings.…”

Production of syllable stress in speakers with autism spectrum disorders

“…Chafe (1970) has argued that languages contain devices used not only to encode meaning but also to point out which constituents refer to material that should be foregrounded in consciousness. One of these devices for foregrounding is emphatic or contrastive stress (Solon, 1980).…”