ANAPHORA RESOLUTION IN CROATIAN: PSYCHOLINGUISTIC EVIDENCE
FROM NATIVE SPEAKERS
Tihana Kraš
Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge
English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, United Kingdom
[email protected]
Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Rijeka
Trg Ivana Klobučarića 1, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
This paper reports the results of an experimental study on the resolution of intra-sentential anaphora in Croatian by adult native speakers.
In a picture-selection task, the speakers had to identify the antecedents of third person null and overt subject pronouns in ambiguous
forward and backward anaphora contexts. Similarly to adult native speakers in comparable studies on Italian, the speakers tended to
resolve anaphora in the subject position with the null pronoun, and in a non-subject position with the overt pronoun. In backward
anaphora, they allowed the overt pronoun to co-refer with both non-subject antecedents that were available in the context of situation,
and in forward anaphora, only with the one that was mentioned in the sentence. This suggests that null and overt subject pronouns have
the same antecedent preferences in intra-sentential anaphora in Croatian and Italian. In both languages, the null pronoun is biased
towards the subject antecedent and the overt pronoun towards a non-subject antecedent. These biases derive from a discoursepragmatic principle which assigns the task of topic shift to the overt pronoun and that of topic maintenance to the null pronoun.
1. Introduction
Due to rich verbal inflection, Croatian allows the omission of overt pronominal subjects in tensed clauses, a phenomenon
known as pro-drop. While the existence of two pronominal options, null and overt, in pro-drop languages arises as a
consequence of formal grammatical properties1, their distribution is regulated by discourse-pragmatic factors. To our
knowledge, the way these forms are used and interpreted in Croatian (or other South Slavic languages) has not been closely
examined so far. This paper aims to fill in this gap by addressing the interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in
sentence-internal contexts in Croatian. Given that this phenomenon, commonly referred to as intra-sentential anaphora
resolution, has been extensively studied in Italian, we take previous studies on Italian as our point of reference. We present
psycholinguistic evidence coming from adult native speakers that intra-sentential anaphora is resolved in practically identical
in Croatian as in Italian, suggesting that the two null subject languages might exhibit an overlap in this domain.
2. Interpretation of pronominal subjects in null subject languages
In null subject languages, null pronouns are felicitous only in contexts in which they are co-referential with the discourse topic
(Grimshaw and Samek-Lodovici 1998, among others). Null and overt subject pronouns are, therefore, used for different
purposes: the former to refer to a referent already introduced in the context (the topic), and the latter to introduce a new
referent or contrast a referent with another. This division of labour between the two pronominal forms has been formally
expressed by Sorace (2000, 2005) by means of the interpretable [+/-Topic Shift] feature: [+Topic Shift] contexts require an
overt pronoun, while [-Topic Shift] contexts demand a null pronoun. This is illustrated in (1). In (1b), functioning as an answer
to the question in (1a), only the null form is felicitous, given that the pronoun refers to the subject of the interrogative
sentence, which is the discourse topic.
(1)
1
a.
Zašto je dječaki zaspao?
why is boy fell.asleep
‘Why did the boy fall asleep?’
In the generative framework, it is assumed that null subjects are licensed by the positive setting of the null-subject parameter (Rizzi 1982, 1986).
b.
Zato što je proi/on bio umoran.
because is pro he was tired
‘Because he was tired.’
In her work on Italian, Carminati (2002) has shown that null and overt pronouns have different antecedent preferences in
intra-sentential anaphora: the null pronoun prefers the subject antecedent, while the overt pronoun prefers a non-subject
antecedent. This can be seen in (2). The null pronominal subject of the subordinate clause is more likely to refer to the matrix
subject (‘la mamma’) than to the matrix complement (‘la figlia’), given that the former is the default topic of the sentence,
while the opposite holds for the overt subject. The overt pronoun can also refer to another referent not mentioned in the
sentence (e.g. ‘the grandmother’).
(2)
mentre proi/?j/lei?i/j/k cucinava.
La mammai ha rimproverato la figliaj
The mother has scolded
the daughter while pro she was.cooking.
‘The mother scolded her daughter while she was cooking.’
Psycholinguistic evidence for Carminati’s generalisation has also been provided in studies testing native Italian speakers and
different types of highly proficient bilingual speakers of Italian and English (Belletti et al. 2007, Serratrice 2005, Sorace and
Filiaci 2006, Tsimpli et al. 2004) or Croatian (Kraš 2008). In ambiguous forward and backward anaphora2 contexts similar to
those in (2), adult native speakers preferred the matrix subject as the antecedent for the null pronoun3 and an antecedent
other than the matrix subject for the overt pronoun. In backward anaphora, they allowed the overt pronoun to co-refer not
only with the matrix complement, but also with an extralinguistic referent that was present in the context of situation.
Carminati (2002:195) argues that some kind of division of labour between null and overt pronouns exists in all null subject
languages, but does not predict exact correspondences across languages. Possible sources of variability include defects in
the verb agreement paradigm and different historical origins of overt forms. In order to determine the degree of overlap
between Italian and Croatian in the domain of intra-sentential anaphora, we conducted an experimental study on Croatian,
the results of which are comparable to those of the Italian studies mentioned above.
3. The study
3.1. Aims
The aim of the study was to determine whether null and overt subject pronouns in Croatian have the same antecedent
preferences in intra-sentential anaphora as they do in Italian. We focused on the interpretation of third person pronouns in
ambiguous bi-clausal sentence in which the pronoun was in the subordinate clause.
Due to comparable richness of the verbal paradigm in the two languages, we predicted that the participants in the study
would resolve anaphora in a similar way as Italian native speakers in previous studies did. More specifically, we predicted
that they would tend to resolve anaphora in the matrix subject position only with null pronouns and that they would regard
both the matrix complement and the extralinguistic referent as plausible antecedents for the overt pronoun in backward
anaphora.
3.2. Participants
The participants in the study were 48 undergraduate students at the University of Rijeka (Croatia), aged 20-27 (mean age:
22.02), who were native speakers of Croatian and who originated from different parts of Croatia. They all read for a degree in
English language and literature and another subject in the area of social sciences and humanities.
2
Forward anaphora is the one in which the pronoun follows its referent and backward andphora the one in which it preceeds its referent.
This, however, applies more closely to Kraš (2008) and Tsimpli et al. (2004) than to the other studies, in which the speakers interpreted the pronoun as
co-referential with either the subject or the complement of the matrix clause in forward anaphora.
3
3.3. Materials and design
We used a modified version of a picture-selection task that was originally used in Tsimpli et al. (2004) and subsequently in
other studies on Italian. This modified version of the task was previously used in Kraš (2008). The participants had to read a
sentence consisting of a main and a subordinate clause and choose a picture that corresponded to the meaning of the
sentence. In this way, they were identifying the performer of the action described in the subordinate clause. The main clause
contained an animate object NP matched in gender and number with the animate subject NP. The sentences were either
ambiguous or unambiguous, depending on the number of possible interpretations of the subordinate clause. Unambiguous
sentences corresponded to the most plausible interpretations of ambiguous sentences and served for the purposes of
control. Four experimental conditions and their matching four control conditions are illustrated in (3) and (4) respectively.
(3)
(4)
a.
FORWARD ANAPHORA – NULL PRONOUN (FANP)
Svjedoki pokazuje optuženogj dok proi/?j ulazi u sudnicu.
witness points accused while pro enters in courtroom
‘The witness points to the accused as he enters the courtroom.’
b.
FORWARD ANAPHORA – OVERT PRONOUN (FAOP)
Svjedoki pokazuje optuženogj dok on?i/j/k ulazi u sudnicu.
witness points accused while he enters in courtroom
‘The witness points to the accused as he enters the courtroom.’
c.
BACKWARD ANAPHORA – NULL PRONOUN (BANP)
Dok proi/?j ulazi u sudnicu, svjedoki pokazuje optuženogj.
while pro enters in courtroom witness points accused
‘As he enters the courtroom, the witness points to the accused.’
d.
BACKWARD ANAPHORA – OVERT PRONOUN (BAOP)
Dok on?i/j/k ulazi u sudnicu, svjedoki pokazuje optuženogj.
while he enters in courtroom witness points accused
‘As he enters the courtroom, the witness points to the accused.’
a.
FORWARD ANAPHORA – NULL PRONOUN – CONTROL (FANPC)
Svjedok pokazuje optuženog ulazeći u sudnicu.
witness points accused entering in courtroom
‘The witness points to the accused while entering the courtroom.’
b.
FORWARD ANAPHORA – OVERT PRONOUN – CONTROL (FAOPC)
Svjedoki pokazuje optuženogj koji pro*i/j ulazi u sudnicu.
witness points accused who pro enters in courtroom
‘The witness points to the accused who enters the courtroom.’
c.
BACKWARD ANAPHORA – NULL PRONOUN – CONTROL (BANPC)
Ulazeći u sudnicu, svjedok pokazuje optuženog.
entering in courtroom witness points accused
‘While entering the courtroom, the witness points to the accused.’
d.
BACKWARD ANAPHORA – OVERT PRONOUN – CONTROL (BAOPC)
Dok sudac ulazi u sudnicu, svjedok pokazuje optuženog.
while judge enters in courtroom witness points accused
‘While the judge enters the courtroom, the witness points to the accused.’
Each sentence was accompanied by three pictures, corresponding to the choice of the matrix subject (S), the matrix
complement (C), and the extralinguistic referent (ER). The thee picture types are numbered 1, 2 and 3 in Fig. 1 respectively.
1
2
3
Figure 1: Example of a picture set
A total of 384 sentences were used in the task. They were divided into eight lists, each containing six items per condition. In
a Latin Square design, forty-eight picture sets were rotated around eight conditions.
3.4. Procedure
The experiment lasted approximately ten minutes. It was implemented with SuperLab Pro 2.0 and run on an IBM ThinkPad
with a 14.4’’ screen. Sentences were presented in a speedy word by word manner, in a random order for each subject. The
pictures appeared on the screen immediately after the last word of the sentence had disappeared. Response time was not
limited.
3.5. Results
The number of times each referent was chosen by each subject in each experimental condition was counted, and then the
proportion of the three referents in each condition was calculated for each subject. The distribution of responses in all eight
conditions is shown in Fig. 2.
Mean percentage of answers
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
FANP FANPC FAOP FAOPC BANP BANPC BAOP BAOPC
Extralinguistic referent 3.99% 2.54% 4.35% 2.90% 7.25% 5.43% 44.20% 84.78%
Complement
28.26% 4.35% 77.90% 83.70% 11.96% 6.16% 42.03% 5.43%
Subject
67.75% 93.12% 17.75% 13.41% 80.80% 88.41% 13.77% 9.78%
Condition
Subject
Complement
Extralinguistic referent
Figure 2: Choice of referent in different experimental conditions
Three ANOVAs with repeated measures with anaphora type (FANP, FAOP, BANP, BAOP) and ambiguity (ambiguous,
unambiguous) as within-subject factors were performed by subject on the individual percentages of responses, one for each
referent. In all three ANOVAs, there was a significant main effect of anaphora type (S: F(3,141) = 367.343, p<.001; C:
F(3,141) = 264.171, p<.001; ER: F(3,141) = 267.645, p<.001) and of ambiguity (S: F(1,47) = 15.760, p<.001; C: F(1,47) =
61.555, p<.001, ER: F(1,47) = 68.326, p<.001), suggesting that the three referents were chosen to a different degree in
different types of anaphora, and in ambiguous and unambiguous sentences. A significant interaction between anaphora type
and ambiguity in all three ANOVAs (S: F(3,141) = 17.367, p<.001; C: F(3,141) = 27.681, p<.001; ER: F(3,141) = 68.326,
p<.001) indicates that in some conditions the difference in the degree to which the three referents were chosen in ambiguous
and unambiguous sentences was bigger, and in some smaller.
In Fig. 2 it can be seen that in the two types of anaphora with a null pronoun, the subjects in most cases interpreted the
pronoun as co-referential with the matrix subject, especially in backward anaphora. Their second choice of antecedent for
the pronoun was the matrix complement, and the third the extralinguistic referent. In the unambiguous versions of the two
sentence types, preferences for the subject referent were stronger and those for the other two referents weaker in
comparison to the ambiguous versions.
Contrastively, in the two types of anaphora with an overt pronoun, the subjects did not opt for the matrix subject as the
referent for the pronoun in the majority of cases, but rather for one or either of the two other referents. More precisely, in
forward anaphora they mainly chose the matrix complement, while in backward anaphora their choices were split between
the matrix complement and the extralinguistic referent. Of the remaining two referents, the subjects preferred the matrix
subject to the extralinguistic referent in forward anaphora. In the unambiguous version of this anaphora, the relative ratios of
the three referents chosen were the same as in the ambiguous version, with the proportion of choice of the matrix
complement increased at the expense of the two other referents. In the unambiguous version of backward anaphora, the
subjects had a clear preference for the extralinguistic referent, choosing the matrix complement to the lowest degree.
4. Discussion and conclusions
The study was designed to test whether null and overt subject pronouns in Croatian have the same antecedent preferences
in ambiguous intra-sentential anaphora as in Italian. Considering the formal properties of the two languages, we expected
that this might indeed be the case, and thus predicted that the participants in our study would resolve anaphora in a way
similar to Italian native speakers in previous studies. More precisely, we predicted that they would prefer a subject
antecedent for the null pronoun and a non-subject antecedent for the overt pronoun, and that they would allow both nonsubject antecedents for the overt pronoun in backward anaphora.
All of these predictions were confirmed in the study. The fact that the in unambiguous, control, conditions the subjects had a
categorical preference for one of the referents indicates that the study was well-designed.
The results of our study suggest that Italian and Croatian exhibit an overlap in the domain of intra-sentential anaphora, i.e.
that third-person null and overt subject pronouns tend to establish co-reference with other sentence elements in the same
way in the two languages. In both languages, anaphora resolution seems to be guided by the discourse-pragmatic principle
according to which the overt pronoun signals topic shift, and the null pronoun topic maintenance.
This study represents an initial step in extending Carminati’s (2002) generalisation on the antecedent preferences of null and
overt subject pronouns in intra-sentential anaphora in Italian to other null subject languages. Future studies, both typological
and psycholinguistic, should seek to determine to what extent this generalisation holds crosslinguistically. These studies
should also consider a wider range of contexts, as it is possible that crosslinguistic differences in the interpretive properties
of null and overt pronouns emerge only under very specific conditions.
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