Empirical Perspectives On Anaphora Resolution

Traditionally, anaphor resolution focused on structural cues of the antecedent. Recently, the interaction between discourse factors and information structure affecting antecedent salience has been more thoroughly explored. This volume depicts selected peer-reviewed research papers that tackle issues in anaphor resolution from theoretical, empirical and experimental perspectives. These collected articles present a wide spectrum of cross-linguistic data (Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, Yurakaré) and also offer new results from L1 and L2 acquisition studies. Data interpretation span from typological to psycholinguistic viewpoints and are related to recent developments in linguistic theory. One data analysis puts the issue of anaphor resolution in a historical context. The experimental findings are complemented by reviews of the current literature on the role of discourse units. This volume gives a comprehensive overview of the state of discussion how the interaction between information structure and contextual discourse affects salience. That's why it will be welcomed by all linguists and psycholinguists who are theoretically and / or experimentally investigating several aspects of anaphor resolution.

Individual Differences in Anaphora Resolution: Language and cognitive effects explores anaphora resolution from different perspectives, and investigates various aspects of the phenomenon, as contributions include research protocols that combine old and new experimental methodologies as well as theoretical and empirical approaches. A central theme across volume contributions are the multiple linguistic and extralinguistic factors that constrain anaphora resolution, its processing and acquisition by a variety of populations (children and adults, monolinguals, bilinguals and second language learners) as well as the mechanisms underlying anaphora resolution. Anaphora resolution constitutes an ideal environment to test the interaction between domain-general cognitive systems and domain-specific linguistic sub-routines, since variability in referential preferences is not related to binding constraints (an integral part of syntax per se) but is closely tied to processing (functional constraints) modulated by the integration of discourse-filtered information.

The Spanish language is spoken by an estimated 477 million people worldwide. This volume focuses on the contact between Spanish and other language varieties, including Catalan, Portuguese and Galician in the Spanish Peninsula. The book explores the characteristics of such language contact situations from structural, developmental, societal and cognitive perspectives.

This volume is a collection of studies on various aspects of word order variation in Turkish. As a head-final, left-branching ‘free’ word order language, Turkish raises a number of significant theory-internal as well as language-particular questions regarding linearization in language. Each of the contributions in the present volume offers a fresh insight into a number of these questions, thus, while expanding our knowledge of the language-particular properties of the word order phenomena, also contribute individually to the theory of linearization in general. Turkish is a configurational language. It licenses constructions in which constituents can occur in non-canonical presubject as well as postverbal positions. Presented within the assumptions of the generative tradition, the discussion and analyses of the various aspects of the linearization facts of the language offer a novel treatment of the issues therein. The authors approach the word order phenomena from a variety of perspectives, ranging from purely syntactic treatments, to accounts as syntax-PF interface or syntax-discourse interface phenomena or as output of base generation.

This book covers anaphora resolution for the English language from a linguistic and computational point of view. First, a definition of anaphors that applies to linguistics as well as information technology is given. On this foundation, all types of anaphors and their characteristics for English are outlined. To examine how frequent each type of anaphor is, a corpus of different hypertexts has been established and analysed with regard to anaphors. The most frequent type are non-finite clause anaphors - a type which has never been investigated so far. Therefore, the potential of non-finite clause anaphors are further explored with respect to anaphora resolution. After presenting the fundamentals of computational anaphora resolution and its application in text retrieval, rules for resolving non-finite clause anaphors are established. Therefore, this book shows that a truly interdisciplinary approach can achieve results which would not have been possible otherwise.

This volume brings together empirical studies and keynote addresses presented at the 15th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition conference hosted by the University of Nevada, Reno in 2019. The studies selected for the volume reflect how the latest developments in generative syntactic theory and psycholinguistic methodologies have impacted second language acquisition research in the last decade, from the linguistic properties under investigation and L1-L2/Ln language pairings down to the specific research questions in each study. The minimalist view of language architecture is at the center of studies investigating L2 acquisition of raising, scope, definiteness, phonological representations, and interlanguage transfer. The volume also showcases the latest research on interface phenomena, language processing, and working memory. Studies analyze data collected with a variety of L2 populations from adult foreign language learners to adolescent L3 learners and heritage speakers.

“Why didn’t they understand me? I was as clear as I could be.” Everyone has had this thought at one time or another. Research from the fields of psychology and cognitive science can provide concrete answers to these questions. In Failing to Communicate, Dr. Roger Kreuz explores the answers to these questions We are exposed to the dangers of miscommunication early in life. As children, we play the Telephone Game and learn an important lesson about the fragility of long communication chains. And as adults, we are constantly on the lookout for misunderstanding. People interrupt each other, on average, about every ninety seconds in order to check their understanding. Despite such vigilance, however, a great deal of what is said and written is not understood as intended. Miscommunication has led to military defeats, the loss of spacecraft, and even more tragically, accidents that cost human lives. It plays a role in road rage and social media feuds. It haunts the courtroom, the boardroom, and the singles bar. Failing to Communicate includes dozens of such examples and explains them in light of what researchers have discovered about how communication works—and why it so often fails. Research from psychology and cognitive science has revealed a host of specific factors that contribute to misunderstanding. Some of these have to do with how our minds make sense of what we hear and read, while others are the result of cognitive, social, and cultural factors. The very structure of a given language can be problematic as well. In short, there is no one reason for miscommunication: there are a host of underlying causes. Issues of misunderstanding have only multiplied as new mediums for communication have arisen. Emails, texts, and social media posts are even more problematic because they are impoverished modes of communication. Without facial cues, tone of voice, gestures, and even the creative use of silence, our intentions in these text-only mediums are even more likely to go awry. Failing to Communicate is intended to appeal, from beginning to end, to the general reader who wants to know more about why our attempts at communication fail so often