The interpretation of German personal pronouns and d-pronouns

Abstract

Three experiments investigated the interpretation and production of pronouns in German. The first two experiments probed the preferred interpretation of a pronoun in contexts containing two potential antecedents by having participants complete a sentence fragment starting either with a personal pronoun or a d-pronoun. We systematically varied three properties of the potential antecedents: syntactic function, linear position, and topicality. The results confirm a subject preference for personal pronouns. The preferred interpretation of d-pronouns cannot be captured by any of the three factors alone. Although a d-pronoun preferentially refers to the non-topic in many cases, this preference can be overridden by the other two factors, linear position and syntactic function. In order to test whether interpretive preferences follow from production biases as proposed by the Bayesian theory of Kehler et al. (2008), a third experiment had participants freely produce a continuation sentence for the contexts of the first two experiments. The results show that personal pronouns are used more often to refer to a subject than to an object, recapitulating the subject preference found for interpretation and thereby confirming the account of Kehler et al. (2008). The interpretation results for the d-pronoun likewise follow from the corresponding production data.

Interpretation preferences in contexts with three antecedents: examining the role of prominence in German pronouns

“…Findings on the interpretation of er have found that this form refers preferentially to a prominent antecedent from the prior discourse (Bader & Portele, 2019;Bouma & Hopp, 2006, 2007Ellert & Holler, 2011;Schumacher et al, 2016), while it retains flexibility in its interpretation and can also refer felicitously to less prominent antecedents, in particular when multiple prominence hierarchies come into play Schumacher et al, 2016Schumacher et al, , 2017Wilson, 2009). Findings for der mainly agree that it refers to a less prominent antecedent and is more rigid in its interpretation (Bader & Portele, 2019;Kaiser, 2011b;Schumacher et al, 2015Schumacher et al, , 2016Schumacher et al, , 2017Wilson, 2009). However, there is no firm consensus across studies on the features contributing to prominence as it relates to pronoun resolution in German.…”

“…Nevertheless, these studies also showed that it was not the thematic role alone that determined resolution preferences, rather, it was thematic role in combination with grammatical role and linear order that determined these preferences. Relatedly, Portele and Bader (2016) claim that a combination of syntactic prominence and givenness is a key component in differentiating the two pronouns, and Bader and Portele (2019) claim that d-pronouns favor the least prominent antecedent that can be determined by a combination of topichood, grammatical role, and linear position, while the personal pronoun in contrast appears to favor the subject of the previous clause.…”

“…Earlier approaches to pronoun resolution sought to identify the individual factors which determined the prominence of particular antecedents. Later, a more nuanced view of prominence developed, in which prominence is determined via the combination of several factors such as grammatical role, position, or thematic role (Bader & Portele, 2019;Järvikivi et al, 2005;Kaiser & Trueswell, 2004;Schumacher et al, 2015Schumacher et al, , 2016. More recent approaches have gone beyond this and identified how pronoun resolution is part of a larger process of establishing coherence in a text or discourse, but is at the same time affected by certain biases.…”

Language contact in a mining community

“…For clitics in German, see Zifonun et al (1997: 316-20) and Nübling (1992); for case distinction and levelling in personal pronouns across German dialects, see Howe (1996: 262-82); for the development of German pronouns from a diachronic perspective, see Howe (1996: 241-61). See Bader and Portele (2019) and Weinert (2007) From Figure 22, it can be observed that solely three personal pronouns, namely the first and second-person singular as well as the third-person singular masculine, possess a distinct form for every single case. All other pronouns either have a joint accusative-dative or nominative-accusative form (Howe 1996: 262).…”

“…According to normative usage, the grammatical gender of the demonstrative pronoun in (5) needs to agree with the grammatical gender of the antecedent in Dutch (het huisN > dat, but de flesC > die), and the same holds for German and Maaslands. 10 Others use the term 'rhematic reference pronoun'(Weinrich et al 2003: 380) or 'd-pronoun'(Bader & Portele 2019).11 Importantly, while demonstratives and personal pronouns can often be used interchangeably, this is not possible in all contexts (for Dutch, see Audring 2020;Kaiser & Trueswell 2004; for German, seeBader & Portele 2019;Weinert 2007). Besides syntax, salience of the antecedent and contrast have been argued to play a role.…”