Psychophysiology, 53 (2016), 129–142. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Printed in the USA.
C 2015 Society for Psychophysiological Research
Copyright V
DOI: 10.1111/psyp.12573
Topic shift impairs pronoun resolution during sentence
comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials
XIAODONG XUa
AND
XIAOLIN ZHOUb,c,d,e,f
a
School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
b
Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China
c
Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China
d
Key Laboratory of Computational Linguistics (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, China
e
PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China
f
Collaborative Innovation Center for Language Competence, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, China
Abstract
This study investigated how topic shift and topic continuation influence pronoun interpretation in Chinese. ERPs
recorded on pronouns in topic structure showed stronger and earlier late positive responses (P600) for the topic-shift
than for the topic-continuation conditions. However, in nontopic structure where the subject (denoting only
subjecthood), rather than the topic (denoting both topichood and subjecthood), acted as the antecedent of the pronoun,
almost indistinguishable P600 responses were obtained on the pronoun regardless of whether it was referring to the
subject (i.e., subject continuation) or the object (i.e., subject shift). Moreover, stronger and earlier P600 responses were
elicited by pronouns in the topic-shift than in the subject-shift conditions, although there was no difference between
the topic-continuation and the subject-continuation conditions. These findings suggest that topic shift results in greater
difficulty in the resolution stage of referential processing, although the bonding process is not sensitive to the
manipulation of topic status, and that topic has a privileged cognitive status relative to other nontopic entities (e.g.,
subject) in real-time language processing.
Descriptors: Topic, Topic shift, Subject shift, Pronoun resolution, ERP, P600
object; Järvikivi, van Gompel, Hyönä, & Bertram, 2005) and
semantic constraints like verb-based implicit causality (e.g., Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006), but also the information-structural distinctions such as topic/comment, topic/focus, and given/new
(Arnold, Kaiser, Kahn, & Kim, 2013). It has been shown that the
information status of an entity influences its salience in discourse
and, to a certain extent, determines whether and how it will be
referred to in the subsequent discourse. However, the existing
experimental studies are mainly concerned with how syntactic and
semantic constraints affect pronoun resolution. Little is known
about how the information-structural constraints, such as topichood, and their interaction with syntactic/semantic constraints,
affect referential processing. The purpose of the current study was
to shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying the modulation
of topic status (vs. nontopic status) and grammatical role upon pronoun resolution.
Topic of an utterance designates what the sentence/discourse is
about; it usually occurs at the beginning of a sentence/discourse.
Topic denotes shared information between the speaker and the
addressee (i.e., givenness, C. N. Li & Thompson, 1989; Reinhart,
1981), in contrast to focus which highlights information that is new
and unpredictable to the addressee (i.e., newness, Colonna,
Schimke, & Hemforth, 2012; C. N. Li & Thompson, 1989;
Reinhart, 1981). Although the linguistic functions of topic and
focusing devices may be dissociable (given vs. new), both devices
Successful language communication requires interlocutors to identify the intended referent of a referring expression in order to make
clear who does what to whom. It is often assumed that reduced
referring expressions like pronouns are preferentially interpreted to
refer to highly salient entities; that is, entities are easily accessible
in the interlocutor’s mental model (Kaiser, 2011). The factors that
can increase the prominence of an entity include not only syntactic
constraints like grammatical role (e.g., subject has preference over
This study was supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of China (31300929) and the Natural Science Foundation of the
Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province (12KJB180007) to
XX, and by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of China
(31470976) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China
(2015CB856400) to XZ. It was also supported by the “Blue Project” for
outstanding young teachers of Nanjing Normal University as well as by
the Academic Development Priority Program of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions awarded to School of Foreign Languages and Cultures,
NNU. We thank Dr. Stephen Politzer-Ahles and Dr. Xiaoming Jiang
and three anonymous reviewers for suggestions concerning earlier versions of the manuscript.
Address correspondence to: Dr. Xiaodong Xu, School of Foreign
Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097,
China. E-mail: [email protected] or Dr. Xiaolin Zhou, e-mail:
[email protected]
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X. Xu and X. Zhou
appear to render referents more accessible for the pronoun (Almor,
1999; Colonna et al., 2012; Cowles, Walenski, & Kluender, 2007).
As a discourse notion, topic should not simply be categorized as
a syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic notion; rather, it is a notion
including all of the above-mentioned concepts, as its functions
extend into both syntactic and discourse domains (W. D. Li, 1996).
Topic is primarily defined and characterized through two perspectives: the structural and the functional (Gundel, 1985, 1993; W. D.
Li, 1996; C. N. Li & Thompson, 1976; L. J. Xu & Langendoen,
1985). Structurally, linguistic analysis suggests that a topic tends to
be associated with an early and prominent syntactic position (sentence-initial position), that is, the highest position in a syntactic
tree (Cowles & Ferreira, 2011; Lambrecht, 1994), although it
sometimes also functions as the subject of a sentence, as demonstrated in Sentence 1 in which Wangyu functions as the sentence
topic as well as the subject of the initial clause.
extended discourse context (Arnold et al., 2000; Cowles et al.,
2007; Kaiser, 2011). For example, in an eye-tracking study, Arnold
et al. (2000) asked participants to view a picture of two persons
while simultaneously listening to a three-sentence passage in which
a gender-marked pronoun referred to one of the persons that was
either repeatedly mentioned (Sentence 3a) or not (Sentence 3b).
The authors found a smaller percentage of fixations on the part of
the picture depicting the nontopic person (e.g., Minnie in 3b) than
on the part depicting the discourse topic (e.g., Donald in 3a). This
effect appeared within 200 ms after the offset of the critical pronoun (he vs. she), suggesting that topic shift immediately affected
pronoun resolution.
1. 王宇/因为/担心/李薇, 所以/他/坚持/二十四小时开机
Wangyu/because/worried about/Liwei, so/he/keeps/a 24-h
phone access.
Because Wangyu worried about Liwei, (so) he keeps a 24-h
phone access.
By recording the ERPs, X. Yang, Chen, Chen, Xu, and Yang
(2013) investigated how semantic integration process was influenced
by topic continuation versus topic shift in a three-sentence context in
Chinese. The last sentence of the discourse contained a critical word
that was either pragmatically congruent or incongruent with the topic
statement established in the initial sentence. An intervening sentence
either maintained or shifted the original topic. While the pragmatic
incoherence evoked an N400 effect in both the topic-shift and topiccontinuation conditions, a late positivity (P600) effect was generated
only in the topic-shift condition. The P600 effect was interpreted as
reflecting the reinterpreting or updating of discourse representation
(Brouwer, Fitz, & Hoeks, 2012; Burkhardt, 2006; Hung &
Schumacher, 2012; Kaan, Dallas, & Barkley, 2007), while the N400
effect was interpreted as reflecting the ease with which a referent
can be related to the wider discourse (Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, &
Petersson, 2004; Kutas & Federmeier, 2011).
The second line of studies manipulated the topic status from
the structural perspective. The topic status was assigned either by
morphological markers (e.g., the Japanese topic marker wa; Hirotani & Schumacher, 2011; Wang & Schumacher, 2013) or by the
structural position (linear order) of the referential expressions
(Hung & Schumacher, 2012; Schumacher & Hung, 2012). Hirotani and Schumacher (2011), for example, examined how the status of Japanese topic marking influences the interpretation of
anaphoric expressions (i.e., full NP anaphor) for different types of
referents (e.g., a given, inferred, or new referent) in the preceding
context. Topic manipulation was on anaphoric expressions and
was assessed by comparing topic-marked anaphoric expressions
(with the topic marker wa as a morpheme on the expressions)
with nontopic-marked anaphoric expressions (with the nontopic
marker ga). While an enhanced N400 modulation was observed
(new<inferred<given) irrespective of whether the anaphor morphologically encoded topic information or not, a larger P600
response was elicited by topic-marked anaphors (e.g., sikisya-wa,
a conductor) than by nontopic-marked anaphors (e.g., sikisya-ga,
a conductor) when a new but inferentially licensed discourse anaphoric expression was introduced— the topic-shift condition (e.g.,
Peter reported on a concert, … a/the conductor …), suggesting
that morphologically encoded topicality only showed sensitivity
during the late-stage processing (e.g., integration processing).
In addition to being placed in a syntactically prominent position
(e.g., sentence-initial position), topic also conveys given information (Haviland & Clark, 1974; Yekovich & Walker, 1978).
Schumacher and Hung (2012) examined how topic status (topic
Functionally, a topic is typically a noun phrase (NP) that
informs what a sentence or discourse is about (Colonna et al.,
2012; Lambrecht, 1994; Reinhart, 1981). The topic of an utterance
can be realized either by embedding a referent (e.g., Wangyu) in
the prominent position of a sentence informing what the sentence is
about, thus forming a binary topic-comment distinction as in Sentence 1 (Lambrecht, 1994; Reinhart, 1981), or by repeatedly referring to a given referent in extended sentential contexts where
various comments or sentences specify properties or relations associated with the referent either explicitly (with linguistic devices) or
implicitly. Taking Sentence 2 as an example, there is an implicit/
situational link between the topic (that fire) and the comment1 (the
fire brigade came quickly), leading the comprehender to infer that
the fire did not cause damage (van Dijk, 1977; L. J. Xu, 2000).
2. 那场火/, 幸亏/消防队/来得快
That fire/, fortunately/the fire brigade/came quickly.
Given its structural as well as functional properties, a topic
entity is normally a preferential candidate for its subsequent referential expression (coreference). An anaphoric expression has a
preference to be resolved toward a topic entity (i.e., topic continuation) but a dispreference to be resolved toward nontopic entities
such as object or subject (i.e., topic shift). Therefore, topic continuation is regarded as an important principle to maintain discourse
coherence during both utterance comprehension (Cowles et al.,
2007; Kaiser, 2011; Stevenson, Nelson, & Stenning, 1995) and
production (Cowles & Ferreira, 2011).
Existing experimental studies concerning topic status and referential processing have been carried out along two lines. The first
line manipulated topic status in terms of repeated mention in an
1. Since there is no obvious semantic or syntactic relation between
the initial NP and the following expressions, some linguists argue that
the topic here may be related to the comment as a whole, but not specifically to a single expression. This kind of topic structure is called a
Chinese-style topic (Chafe, 1976; L. J. Xu, 2000).
3. (a) Donald is bringing some mail to Minnie. He’s sauntering
down the hill while a violent storm is beginning. He …
(b) Donald is bringing some mail to Minnie. He’s sauntering
down the hill while a violent storm is beginning. She …
Topic shift and pronoun resolution
position vs. nontopic position) interacts with the givenness of the
referent (given vs. inferred) to determine the interpretation of anaphoric expressions in German; in these sentences, topic was
defined as the anaphoric expression (Den Schriftsteller/the author)
at the beginning of the sentence (see Sentence 4a,b).
4. (a) Ein Schüler/kaufte/gestern/einen Roman/am Bahnhof.
Den Schriftsteller/verehrte/er/schon/seit einer Weile.
(Inferred—topicalized OVS)
A studentnominative/bought/yesterday/a novelaccusative/at
the train station/the authoraccusative/adored/henominative/
already/for a while
Yesterday, a student bought a novel at the train station.
The author, he had adored [him] for quite a while.
(b) Ein Schüler/interviewte/gestern/einen Schriftsteller/am
Bahnhof. Den Schriftsteller/verehrte/er/schon/seit einer
Weile. (Given—topicalized OVS)
A studentnominative/interviewed/yesterday/an authoraccusative/at the train station/the authoraccusative/adored/henominative/already/for a while
Yesterday, a student interviewed an author at the train
station. The author, he had adored [him] for quite a
while.
5. (a) Ein Schüler/kaufte/gestern/einen Roman/am Bahnhof. Er/
verehrte/den Schriftsteller/schon/seit einer Weile.
(Inferred—canonical SVO)
A studentnominative/bought/yesterday/a novelaccusative/at the
train
station/henominative/adored/the
authoraccusative/
already/for a while
Yesterday, a student bought a novel at the train station.
He had adored the author for quite a while.
(b) Ein Schüler/interviewte/gestern/einen Schriftsteller/am
Bahnhof. Er/verehrte/den Schriftsteller/schon/seit einer
Weile. (Given—canonical SVO)
A studentnominative/interviewed/yesterday/an authoraccusative/at the train station/henominative/adored/the authoraccusative/already/for a while
Yesterday, a student interviewed an author at the train station. He had adored the author for quite a while.
In addition to an N400 effect evoked by inferred (vs. given)
anaphoric expressions in both topic (4a,b) and nontopic (5a,b) positions, this study failed to reveal any modulation of givenness on
P600 at the initial topic position, although such modulation was
observed at the nontopic position (e.g., the canonical-object position, see 5a,b). The absence of a P600 effect at the initial topic
position led the authors to argue that discourse updating is not sensitive to the degree of givenness.
Hung and Schumacher (2012) also investigated the influence of
different topic status (topic shift vs. topic continuation) on nominal
anaphor interpretation in Chinese. The authors constructed
question-answer pairs consisting of topic and nontopic questions
followed by continuations yielding three different constellations of
information structures, namely, the continuation of the previous
topic (Zhangsan in 6a), the discontinuation of the previous topic
(Zhangsan in 6b), and the introduction of a novel topic (Zhangsan
in 6c).
6. (a) topic-continuation:
张三怎么了? 张三/李四/殴打了.
What about Zhangsantopic? Zhangsantopic/Lisi/beat.
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(b) topic shift:
李四怎么了? 张三/李四/殴打了.
What about Lisitopic? Zhangsantopic/Lisi/beat.
(c) novel-topic:
怎么了? 张三/李四/殴打了.
What happened? Zhangsantopic/Lisi/beat.
ERPs recorded at the initial topic position of the answer (the
first name) showed that relative to the topic-continued anaphor
(6a), the topic-shift anaphor (6b) evoked a larger late positivity
(P600) in addition to a more pronounced negativity (N400),
whereas the novel-topic anaphor (6c) only evoked an N400 effect,
suggesting that the late-stage integration processing was different
for topic shift compared to new topic.
A Neurocognitive Model of Anaphora Resolution
According to a psycholinguistic model of anaphora resolution, pronoun resolution can be differentiated into a bonding stage and a
resolution stage (Garrod & Sanford, 1994; Garrod & Terras, 2000),
and these two processing steps can be linked to specific languagerelated ERP components (Callahan, 2008). The bonding stage is
related to several negative manifestations such as LAN (left anterior negativity), Nref (sustained anterior negativity), or N400 (Qiu,
Swaab, Chen, & Wang, 2012; X. D. Xu, Jiang, & Zhou, 2013),
reflecting the difficulty of retrieving an anaphor with the antecedent entities. For example, Streb, Rösler, and Hennighausen (1999)
found that, relative to the coreferential NP (i.e., name), the coreferential pronoun elicits a larger frontal anterior negativity (LAN),
reflecting the increased working memory load for retrieving the
antecedent of a pronoun. In cases where the discourse context contains more than one plausible referent, such referential ambiguity
on either an NP or a pronoun would result in a sustained anterior
negativity, namely, Nref, which has been interpreted as reflecting
the increased difficulty of establishing reference when there are
multiple possible antecedents (Hoeks & Brouwer, 2014; Van Berkum, Brown, & Hagoort, 1999). In contrast, the resolution stage is
always manifested by a late positive response (i.e., P600) regardless of the referential forms (nominal anaphor or pronoun) and
cross-linguistic variations (Qiu et al., 2012; X. D. Xu, Jiang, &
Zhou, 2013). The P600 effect has been interpreted as reflecting the
process of recomputing the inappropriate coreferential relation or
integrating the referential relation with the whole discourse. Moreover, as suggested by a number of studies (Barber & Carreiras,
2005; Brouwer et al., 2012; Friederici, Mecklinger, Spencer, Steinhauer, & Donchin, 2001; Kaan, 2002; Silva-Pereyra, GutierrezSigut, & Carreiras, 2012), the P600 in sentence processing may be
composed of two subprocesses, early P600 and late P600, with different functional interpretations. For sentences with syntactic
anomalies (e.g., violation of structural preference in garden path
sentences), the initial process reflects the ease with which a necessary reanalysis is initiated, whereas the second subprocess reflects
the cost of the reanalysis or integration operations (Friederici,
1998; Friederici et al., 2001; Kaan, 2002; Kaan et al., 2007). For
sentences with referential anomalies (e.g., violation of gender
agreement during pronoun resolution), the early P600 was interpreted as reflecting the process of testing/evaluating the link
between the pronoun and the antecedent, whereas the late P600
may reflect the resolution/integration of the pronoun-antecedent
relationship (Silva-Pereyra et al., 2012).
The consistent observations of increased P600 responses to
anaphora in the topic-shift versus topic-continuation conditions
X. Xu and X. Zhou
132
(Hirotani & Schumacher, 2011; Hung & Schumacher, 2012; Schumacher & Hung, 2012; Wang & Schumacher, 2013; X. Yang et al.,
2013) can be interpreted within the two-stage neurocognitive
model, as this model proposes that the difficulty in discourse integration would lead to a consistently larger P600. However, the
absence of a LAN or an Nref (although sometimes an N400 did
appear) in those studies seems to be difficult for the two-stage
model, suggesting that the process of establishing a linking relationship between an anaphor and the antecedent is prone to modulation of the task and cross-language variations.
Taken together, results from both behavioral and electrophysiological studies suggest that topic status can facilitate the interpretation of semantically rich anaphoric expressions (i.e., full NP
anaphor) that are coreferential with topical entities and impair the
interpretation of those anaphoric expressions that are coreferential
with nontopical entities. However, a number of limitations concerning these studies should be noted. Firstly, the manipulation of
topic status in these studies was generally confounded with the
amount of times a referential entity was mentioned (Cowles et al.,
2007; Hirotani & Schumacher, 2011; Hung & Schumacher, 2012;
Kaiser, 2011). For example, while the topical entities were mentioned twice in certain conditions (e.g., the given context condition
in Hirotani & Schumacher, 2011, and Schumacher & Hung, 2012,
and the topic-continuation condition in Hung & Schumacher,
2012), they were only mentioned once in other conditions (e.g., the
inferred context condition in Hirotani & Schumacher, 2011, and
Schumacher & Hung, 2012, and the topic-shift condition in Hung
& Schumacher, 2012). The difference in repetition times of a topical entity in the context may generate ERP differences observed on
the referential expressions (cf. Heine, Tamm, Hofmann, Hutzler, &
Jacobs, 2006). Secondly, the manipulation of the topic status in the
previous electrophysiological studies was realized on the anaphoric
expressions, rather than on their corresponding antecedents or
referents. It therefore remains unclear how the topic status of an
antecedent would modulate the neurocognitive processes underlying anaphor resolution. Thirdly, semantically rich anaphoric
expressions like full NP anaphor were adopted in previous studies;
it is not clear whether the resolution of a semantically impoverished
anaphoric expression (e.g., a pronoun) would lead to a similar pattern of results. Finally, previous experimental studies on topic and
anaphor resolution are restricted mainly to European languages,
which are subject-prominent languages (C. N. Li & Thompson,
1976; L. J. Xu & Liu, 2007). At the sentence level, the SVO is the
canonical structure in these languages, and topic construction is
highly marked and used only in a few special cases (e.g., for
emphasis). It remains unclear to what extent the anaphor interpretation would benefit from topic status in the so-called topic-prominent languages, in which topicality is encoded in a more natural
way.
The Current Study
Although Chinese and English are both classified as SVO (subjectverb-object) languages, the sentence structures of these two languages are organized in fundamentally different ways (Li, 1996; Li
& Thompson, 1976). Unlike English, Chinese is regarded as a
topic-prominent language at the sentence level, in which topic
comment is a canonical sentence structure and the notion of topic
is utilized in the construction of sentences to a greater degree than
other nontopic-prominent languages (W. D. Li, 1996). Indeed,
according to Chao (1968), at least 50% of Chinese sentences can
be analyzed as having the topic-comment structure, in which a
topic establishes a reference point upon which the rest of the sentence (i.e., comment) is centered. For example, Sentence 7a is a
typical topic-comment structure (OSV, object-subject-verb) in Chinese, which is different from the canonical SVO structure (Sentence 7b) not only structurally but also pragmatically, because 烈
性酒 (strong wine) is both regarded as given information (givenness) and is what the following utterance is about (i.e., aboutness)
in Sentence 7a but not 7b.
7. (a) 烈性酒/爷爷/从来不喝. (OSV structure)
The strong wine/Grandpa/never touches.
(b) 爷爷/从来不喝/烈性酒. (SVO structure)
Grandpa/never touches/strong wine.
Figure 1. The two sentence structures adopted in this experiment. Left: Constituent 王宇 constrains the whole sentence structure. Right: Constituent
constrains only the first clause. S5sentence/clause; T5topic; C5comment; Ø5pro; ADV5adverbial clause; CONJ5conjunction.
Topic shift and pronoun resolution
Moreover, the topic-comment structure in Chinese (like 7a) can
be syntactically and prosodically unmarked with respect to its
information structure, although the topic typically appears at the
sentence-initial position.
In this study, topic status was manipulated in terms of whether
the referent of a subsequent, critical pronoun was put in the
sentence-initial or noninitial position and in terms of whether the
initial referent denoted the sentence-level aboutness (i.e., topic) or
clause-level aboutness (i.e., subject). For example, in Sentences 8a,
b, Wangyu (王宇, a typical male name) stands at the sentenceinitial position and acts as both the topic of the sentence and as the
subject of the initial clause, given that the whole sentence refers to
what happened to Wangyu and provides the referential or pragmatic
framework with respect to which the predication concerning Wangyu is evaluated (Wangyu keeps a 24-h phone access). Wangyu in
8a,b, therefore, constrains not only the subordinate clause (Wangyu
worried about Liwei), but also the main clause (he kept a 24-h
phone access). Thus, the gender-marked pronoun in the main
clause should be preferentially interpreted as coreferential with
Wangyu, not Liwei (李薇, a typical female name). However, if the
pronoun was actually resolved to refer to Liwei instead of Wangyu
by the gender agreement cue, as illustrated in 8b, it would result in
topic discontinuation or topic shift.
8. (a) 王宇/因为/担心/李薇, 所以/他/坚持/二十四小时开机.
Wangyumale/yinwei/danxin/Liweifemale/, suoyi/tamale/jianchi/ershisixiaoshi/kaiji.
Wangyu/because/worry about/Liwei/, so/he/insist on/24 h/
keep phone on.
Because Wangyu worries about Liwei, (so) he keeps a 24h phone access.
(b) 王宇/因为/担心/李薇, 所以/她/坚持/二十四小时开机.
Wangyumale/yinwei/danxin/Liweifemale/, suoyi/tafemale/jianchi/ershisixiaoshi/kaiji.
Wangyu/because/worry about/Liwei/, so/she/insist on/
24 h/keep phone on.
Because Wangyu worries about Liwei, (so) she keeps a
24-h phone access.
9. (a) 因为/王宇/担心/李薇, 所以/他/坚持/二十四小时开机.
Yinwei/Wangyumale/danxin/Liweifemale/, suoyi/tamale/jianchi/
ershisixiaoshi/kaiji.
Because/Wangyu/worry about/Liwei/, so/he/insist on/24 h/
keep phone on.
Because Wangyu worries about Liwei, (so) he keeps a 24-h
phone access.
(b) 因为/王宇/担心/李薇, 所以/她/坚持/二十四小时开机.
Yinwei/Wangyumale/danxin/Liweifemale/,
suoyi/tafemale/
jianchi/ ershisixiaoshi/kaiji.
Because/Wangyu/worry about/Liwei/, so/she/insist on/
24 h/keep phone on.
Because Wangyu worries about Liwei, (so) she keeps a
24-h phone access.
However, in sentences 9a,b, where Wangyu is embedded in the
causal subordinate clause (i.e., after the causal conjunction), Wangyu functions together with the verb of the subordinate clause and
controls grammatical processes related to the verb (e.g., selectional
constraints). Thus Wangyu acts only as the subject of the subordinate clause (i.e., the “because” clause) and cannot constrain the
sentential constituents in the main clause. Under this circumstance,
the cross-clausal referential pronoun can be interpreted as referring
133
to Wangyu (9a), Liwei (9b), or even another male/female character
not directly mentioned in the sentence.
We compared sentences with the structure: NP1+because+verb
+NP2, so+pronoun … (8a,b) to sentences with the structure:
because+NP1+verb +NP2, so+pronoun …(9a,b).2 In the topic
structure (Figure 1, left panel), NP1 occupies the initial position and
acts as the sentence topic in addition to the subject of the initial subordinate clause. Two types of sentences were used: topic-continued
(T+C+) and topic-shift sentences (T+C2).3 For the topic-continued
sentence (8a), a gender-marked pronoun in the main clause refers to
the topic (NP1, e.g., Wangyu, a typical male name) as implied by
the gender agreement cue; for the topic-shift sentence (8b), the pronoun refers to the object (NP2, e.g., Liwei, a typical female name)
in the subordinate clause as implied by the gender agreement cue,
rather than the topic (NP1). Similar manipulations were applied to
subject-continued sentences (T2C+, see 9a) and subject-shift sentences (T2C2, see 9b); see Figure 1, right panel.
According to the psycholinguistic model of anaphora resolution,
different stages of pronoun resolution are associated with different
ERP effects (Callahan, 2008; Silva-Pereyra et al., 2012). Given that
the resolution stage is consistently manifested by a late positivity
effect (P600 effect) and that a similar positivity effect has also
been repeatedly observed in sentences with topic shift (Hirotani &
Schumacher, 2011; Hung & Schumacher, 2012; X. Yang et al.,
2013), we predicted such an effect for topic-shift sentences (T
+C2, 8b) compared with the topic-continued sentences (T+C+, 8a)
or the subject-shift sentences (T2C2, 9b) during pronoun resolution. In particular, as the P600 during pronoun resolution is composed of two subprocesses (e.g., Silva-Pereyra et al., 2012; L. J.
Xu, Jiang, & Zhou, 2013), we predicted that the modulation of topichood on the P600 amplitude should be apparent in both processes
(i.e., early P600 and late P600) because, relative to topic continuation or subject shift, topic shift not only leads to difficulty in the
final integration process but also in the evaluation of the link
between the pronoun and its potential antecedents. Moreover, relative to the topic-shift effect, the subject-shift effect tends to be
smaller; it is possible that subject shift only leads to difficulty in
the final integration process.
For the ERP effects in the bonding stage, however, the predictions become less clear. Given that previous studies with various
manipulations did not observe effects on earlier ERP components
(N400 or LAN) on the pronoun in either Chinese or English
(Osterhout, Berswick, & McLaughlin, 1997; Osterhout & Mobley,
1995; X. D. Xu, Jiang, & Zhou, 2013), we predicted no difference
in the N400/LAN amplitudes for the contrast topic shift (T+C2)
versus topic continuation (T+C+) or subject shift (T2C2) versus
subject continuation (T2C+) at the initial bonding stage.
Method
Participants
Twenty-four native Chinese speakers (8 males, age ranging from 18
to 26 years with mean age of 23.6 years) were recruited from Nanjing Normal University and were paid for their participation. All of
them were right-handed, mentally healthy, and had normal or
2. These sentences are based on the sentence structures from L. J.
Xu (2003).
3. In the rest of this paper, T+C+ stands for topic-continued or consistent (sentence), T+C2 stands for topic-shift or inconsistent (sentence), T2C+ stands for subject-continued or consistent (sentence), and
T2C2 stands for subject-shift or inconsistent (sentence).
X. Xu and X. Zhou
134
Table 1. Mean Scores and Standard Deviations in Acceptability
Rating
Sentence acceptability
T+C+
T+C2
T2C+
T2C2
Mean
SD
5.73
2.78
5.56
3.33
0.83
1.09
0.87
1.14
Note. Ratings are based on a seven-point Likert scale (15least acceptable; 75most acceptable).
corrected-to-normal vision. This study was approved by the Ethics
Committee of the Department of Psychology, Peking University.
Design and Materials
As illustrated by Sentences 8a,b and 9a,b, the experiment had a
2 3 2 factorial design, with topic status (topic vs. subject) and pronoun consistency (continuation vs. shift) as the two withinparticipant factors. This resulted in four experiment conditions:
topic continuation (T+C+), topic shift (T+C2), subject continuation (T2C+), and subject shift (T2C2); the constituency here
refers to the gender agreement relation between the pronoun and
the previously mentioned antecedent (topic or subject). As can be
seen from the example sentences, we made sure that the topic and
nontopic structures (i.e., SVO) were created with identical sentential constituents, with the exception that the first noun functioned
as the subject of the subordinate clause as well as the topic of the
whole sentence in the topic structure but only as the subject of the
subordinate clause in the nontopic structure. Moreover, the Chinese
topic-comment structure ensured that both topic and subject were
mentioned only once in each condition, thereby ruling out the
potential confound of repetition times.
There were 136 quartets of critical stimulus sentences. Each
sentence consisted of two clauses; the first subordinate clause
described an event or behavior involving two protagonists of different genders introduced by proper names (e.g., 王宇/Wangyu, and
李薇/Liwei). It is important to note that the implicit causality of the
verbs may exert influence on pronoun resolution (e.g., Caramazza,
Grober, Garvey, & Yates, 1977; Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006;
Stewart, Pickering, & Sanford, 2000), as the implicit causality
verbs strongly bias the subject NP or the object NP to be associated
with the cause of a given event; information about the cause of an
event expressed by a verb is conveyed implicitly as part of its
meaning. For the present study, the implicit causality of the verbs
would bias the resolution of the subsequent pronoun toward the
first protagonist (the topic or subject). These verbs are called NP1biased verbs, in contrast to NP2-biased verbs, which render pronouns as preferentially referring to the second protagonist. In order
to encourage the reader to read the sentence naturally without
adopting certain processing strategies, 196 two-clause filler sentences were constructed, including 60 sentences similar to the critical
conditions but with NP2- rather than NP1-biased verbs, 40 sentences containing the pronoun but composed of two clauses connected
with other conjunctions (e.g., but, although), or no conjunctions,
and 98 sentences containing no pronouns.
Prior to the selection of the final set of sentences, the potential
materials underwent four separate pretests, including a sentence
completion test, a sentence acceptability rating test, and two pronoun referential possibility tests.
The sentence completion task was used to choose the NP1biased verbs so as to minimize the potential interference of verbrelated semantic biases on pronoun interpretation and to ensure that
the pronoun unambiguously referred to the topic or subject antecedent on the basis of the gender cue (part of the materials were
selected from X. D. Xu, Ni, & Chen, 2013). Forty participants
were asked to write a meaningful continuation to the fragment of
each critical sentence (i.e., the fragment without the main clause,
as in 王宇因为担心李薇, 所以… (Wangyu because worried about
Liwei, (so) …), or 因为王宇担心李薇, 所以… (Because Wangyu
worried about Liwei, (so) …) (see 8a or 9a). Participants were
encouraged to begin the continuation with a pronoun (he or she) or
with the repetition of a name used in the subordinate clause (e.g.,
王宇/Wangyu or 李薇/Liwei). On the basis of this pretest, 136
quartets of NP1-biased materials were selected for the ERP experiment. Over the critical sentences, 88% of the participants used the
pronoun/nominal-anaphor coreferential with the topic antecedent
(topic reference) when the first noun functioned as the sentence
topic, and 83% of the participants used the pronoun/nominal anaphor coreferential with the subject antecedent (subject reference)
when the first noun acted as the clause subject; the difference
between topic reference and subject reference was significant, t
(39)512.1, p<.005.
The purpose of the sentence acceptability rating was to examine
the acceptability of each of the sentences. For this task, the critical
sentences, together with filler sentences, were divided into four versions using a Latin square design. Forty students who did not participate in the sentence completion tests were randomly assigned to
one of the four versions and were asked to judge the acceptability
of each of the sentences using a seven-point Likert scale (15least
acceptable and 75most acceptable). A 2 3 2 repeated measures
analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant main effect
of topic status, F(1,39)55.79, p<.05, and consistency, F(1,39)5
191,14, p<.001. It also revealed a significant two-way interaction
between topic status and consistency, F(1,39)519.38, p<.001,
showing a greater effect of consistency for topics than for subjects.
Pairwise comparisons showed that sentences with T+C+ or T2C+
pronouns had higher acceptability than the T+C2 sentences or the
T2C2 sentences (Table 1), t(39)514.48, p<.001 and t(39)5
10.97, p<.001, respectively. Interestingly, T+C2 sentences were
rated as less acceptable than T2C2 sentences, t(39)54.85, p
<.001; yet there was no difference between the two consistent conditions, t(39)51.50, p<.1.
Two pronoun referential probability tests were conducted to
measure to what extent participants would adopt a strategy to refer
to a sentence-external referential entity when encountering a critical pronoun and, if there was such possibility, whether there was
difference in the out-of-context referential probability between the
two inconsistent conditions. In both tests, sentence constituents
after the pronoun were truncated. In the forced-choice test, the critical pronoun in each truncated sentence was provided with three referential choices: the initial protagonist (NP1), the second
protagonist (NP2), and a third person not mentioned in the context
(external reference). Twenty-four participants were asked to select
one of the protagonists as the actual referent of the pronoun. In the
probability judgment test, the same truncated sentences and choices
were used, and another 24 participants were asked to estimate the
probability of the pronoun corresponding to each of the choices.
Results from the forced-choice test showed that the percentage of
sentence-external references for both T+C2 and T2C2 sentences
was quite low (7.0% and 9.3%, respectively), although the difference between them was significant, t(23)52.40, p<.05 (Table 2).
Topic shift and pronoun resolution
135
Table 2. Mean Percentage and Standard Deviation for Each Consistent or Inconsistent Condition on the Critical Pronoun
Probability judgment
Coreference
NP1
NP2
A third person
Forced-choice
T+C+
T+C2
T2C+
T2C2
T+C+
T+C2
T2C+
T2C2
88.9610.3
1.962.9
9.2610.3
12.7621.9
52.5621.8
34.8619.1
82.3610.5
2.564.2
15.069.7
7.6616.8
56.8618.3
35.6616.2
95.967.6
1.364.3
2.463.9
2.768.0
87.7615.0
9.3611.1
95.567.4
1.963.4
2.464.4
2.367.4
90.0614.2
7.068.2
Although the probabilities of sentence-external references for the T
+C2 and T2C2 conditions were judged to be higher in the probability judgment test than in the forced-choice test, the difference
between the two conditions (34.8% vs. 35.6%) was not significant,
t(23)<1. This suggests that the tendency to resolve the pronoun
toward a third, context-external referent was the same for the topicinconsistent and subject-inconsistent sentences.
Results from the two referential probability tests also showed a
strong preference for pronouns to refer to antecedents in topic or
subject positions (see Table 2), although this bias, induced by the
verb-based implicit causality, was stronger for the T+C+ sentences
(88.9%) than for the T2C+ sentences (82.3%), t(23)526.8,
p<.001. This finding was in line with the results of the sentencecompletion task, which showed a higher percentage of topic reference than subject reference (88% vs. 83%). The consistency
between the findings suggests that a topic exerts stronger constraints than a subject on pronoun interpretation. Conversely, when
these constraints were violated due to the mismatching of gender
cue, the pronoun was less likely to be resolved toward the object
noun for the T+C2 sentences than for the T2C2 sentences:
52.5% versus 56.8% in the probability judgment test, t(23)58.79,
p<.01; 87.7% versus 90% in the forced choice test, t(23)511.1,
p<.005. This finding showed that, when the first NP was used as a
topic, as compared to a subject, participants had more difficulty in
using the gender agreement cue to resolve the pronoun toward the
correct object NP, indicating again the stronger constraints on pronoun resolution by the topic than by the subject.
Procedure
Participants sat in a comfortable chair in a dimly lit room and were
instructed to read each sentence carefully. Each trial began with a
fixation cross (+) at the center of the screen for 500 ms, followed
by a blank screen for 500 ms. Then, the first clause (the subordinate
clause) was presented on the screen (the screen included the entire
clause). After reading the first clause, the participant immediately
pressed the space bar to initiate the second clause (the main clause),
which was presented segment by segment at the center of the
screen. Each segment was presented for 400 ms followed by a 400ms blank screen. The final segment of each sentence was followed
by a yes/no comprehension question that probed the level of understanding of the sentence. For example, participants should give a
no response to the comprehension question 王宇从不开手机/Wangyu always keeps his mobile phone powered off, following the critical sentence 因为王宇担心李薇,所以他坚持二十四小时开机/
Because Wangyu worried about Liwei, he keeps a 24-h phone
access. The assignment of left/right hand to yes/no response was
counterbalanced across participants.
Each participant performed a practice block of 20 sentences,
which had similar structures as the test stimuli. In the experiment,
the test stimuli were divided into five blocks, and the participant
had an average break of about 3 min between each block. The test
of each participant lasted about 2 h, including electrode preparation.
EEG Recording and Data Analysis
EEG activity was recorded from 63 electrodes in a secured elastic
cap (Electro-cap International). The EEGs were referenced online
to the tip of the nose and rereferenced offline to the algebraic average activity measured in the left and right mastoids (TP9 and
TP10). The vertical electrooculogram (VEOG) was monitored
from electrodes located above the right eye and the horizontal electrooculogram (HEOG) from electrodes located at the outer canthus
of the left eye. In offline data analysis, trials with absolute values
greater than 60 lV were excluded from further analysis. Trials
with ocular artifacts were corrected using the independent component analysis approach. Electrode impedances were kept below
5 kX. EEG signals were filtered using a band-pass of 0.016–70 Hz,
and digitized at a sampling rate of 500 Hz.
For each of the 136 critical sentences (34 per condition), the
800-ms ERP epoch was extracted for the pronoun in the second
clause, with a prestimulus baseline of 200 ms. Trials with incorrect
responses were eliminated from data analysis, and the remainder
were screened for drift artifacts. The mean number of trials
included for EEG analysis was 30.9 for the T2C+ condition, 28.8
for the T2C2 condition, 30.6 for the T+C+ condition, and 28.7
for the T+C2 condition.
On the basis of visual inspection as well as the relevant literature (e.g., Friederici et al., 2001; Silva-Pereyra et al., 2012; X. D.
Xu, Jiang, & Zhou, 2013), four time windows, namely, 180–240
ms, 270–330 ms, 350–550 ms, and 550–750 ms, were selected for
statistical analysis of the early positivity, the early negativity, the
early P600, and the late P600, respectively. ANOVAs were conducted on mean ERP amplitudes in these four time windows, with
topic status (topic vs. subject), pronoun consistency (continuation
vs. shift), and topographical factors as within-participant variables.
For the midline analysis, the topographic factor was electrode—
three levels: anterior (Fz and FCz), central (Cz and CPz), and posterior (Pz and POz). For the lateral analysis, the topographic factor
was region (three levels: anterior vs. central vs. posterior) and
hemisphere (two levels: left vs. right). The region and hemisphere
were crossed, resulting in six regions of interest (ROI): left frontal
(F1, F3, F5, FC1, FC3, FC5), left central (C1, C3, C5, CP1, CP3,
CP5), left posterior (P1, P3, P5, PO3, PO7), right frontal (F2, F4,
F6, FC2, FC4, FC6), right central (C2, C4, C6, CP2, CP4, CP6),
and right posterior (P2, P4, P6, PO4, PO8). Mean amplitudes over
electrodes in each ROI were entered into ANOVAs. The Greenhouse–Geisser correction was performed when appropriate.
Results
Behavioral Results
The average comprehension question accuracy was 95.5% (mean
32.4, SD51.44) for the T+C+ condition, 88.1% (mean530.0, SD
2.63) for the T+C2 condition, 94.0% (mean532.0, SD51.55) for
the T2C+ condition, and 86.5% (mean529.4, SD53.69) for the
136
X. Xu and X. Zhou
Figure 2. Grand-average ERPs time-locked to the critical pronouns for the T2C+, the T2C2, the T+C+, and the T+C2 conditions.
Figure 3. The difference waves resulting from the subtractions of ERPs for T+C+ from that for T+C2 (blue line), ERPs for T2C+ from that for
T2C2 (black line), ERPs for T2C2 from that for T+C2 (green line), and ERPs for T2C+ from that for T+C+ (red line).
Topic shift and pronoun resolution
137
Figure 4. Topographic maps for the difference waves resulting from the subtractions of ERPs for T+C+ from that for T+C2 (a), ERPs for T2C+
from that for T2C2 (b), ERPs for T2C2 from that for T+C2 (c), and ERPs for T2C+ from that for T+C+ (d) in the 180–240 ms, 270–330 ms,
350–550 ms, and 550–750 ms time windows, respectively.
T2C2 condition. ANOVA with topic status and pronoun consistency as two within-subject factors revealed a main effect of consistency, F(1,23)524.84, p<.001, suggesting that topic-consistent
and subject-consistent sentences were generally easier to understand than topic-inconsistent and subject-inconsistent sentences.
No other effects reached significance, ps<.1.
Electrophysiological Results
The grand-average ERP waveforms, as illustrated in Figure 2,
showed that larger late positive ERP responses were evoked by the
T+C2 pronouns as compared to the T+C+ pronouns; however,
there was no clear difference in P600 responses between the
T2C2 condition and the T2C+ condition (see Figure 3 for the
difference waves and Figure 4 for their corresponding topographic
maps). Moreover, compared with T2C2 pronouns, T+C2 pronouns elicited larger late positive ERP responses. Statistical analyses confirmed these observations.
The 180–240 ms time window (early positivity). Repeated
measures ANOVA involving topic status, pronoun consistency,
region, and hemisphere in the lateral analysis revealed a significant
main effect of topic status, F(1,23)55.20, p<.05, and a significant
four-way interaction, F(2,46)56.52, p<.01. Further comparisons
aimed at understanding the interaction showed that T+C2 pronouns evoked larger positivities than T2C2 pronouns in the left
central, t(23)52.79, p<.02, and left posterior regions, t(23)52.73,
p<.02, as well as in the right frontal, t(23)52.98, p<.01, and right
central regions, t(23)53.03, p<.01. No other effects reached significance. The midline analysis showed neither main effects nor
interactions.
The 270–330 ms time window (early negativity). The lateral
analysis revealed a significant two-way interaction between topic
status and pronoun consistency, F(1,23)55.30, p<.05. No other
main effects or interactions were significant. Further analyses to
resolve the interaction showed that, compared with T+C2 pronouns, T2C2 pronouns evoked more negative responses, F
(1,23)55.54, p<.05, whereas there were no differences between T
+C+ pronouns and T2C+ pronouns, F<1. In the other direction,
the comparison between T2C2 pronouns and T2C+ pronouns
did not show a significant effect, F(1,23)52.94, p<.1, nor did the
comparison between T+C2 pronouns and T+C+ pronouns, F
(1,23)51.58, p<.2. The midline analysis did not reveal anything
significant.
The 350–550 ms time window (early P600). The lateral analysis revealed a significant main effect of topic status, F(1,23)55, p
<.05, with increased P600 responses to topic-referring pronouns
than to subject-referring pronouns, and a significant four-way interaction between topic status, pronoun consistency, region, and hemisphere, F(2,46)55.99, p<.01. Further analyses to resolve the
interaction showed that T+C2 pronouns elicited more positive
responses than T+C+ pronouns in the right central, t(23)51.93,
.05<p<.1, the right posterior, t(23)52.73, p<.05, and the left posterior regions, t(23)53.81, p<.01. Moreover, T+C2 pronouns
X. Xu and X. Zhou
138
Figure 5. Topographic maps for the difference waves resulting from
the subtraction of the subject-shift effect (T2C2 minus T2C+) from
the topic-shift effect (T+C2 minus T+C+) in the 350–550 ms and 550–
750 ms time windows.
elicited more positive responses than T2C2 pronouns in the right
frontal, t(23)52.30, p<.05, right central, t(23)52.35, p<.05, and
right posterior regions, t(23)52.11, p<.05, and in the left posterior
region, t(23)52.93, p<.01. The distributions of these effects can
be seen in Figure 4.
The midline analysis failed to show any significant main effects
or interactions, although T+C2 pronouns did elicit more positive
responses than T+C+ pronouns on the posterior electrodes (Pz and
Poz), t(23)52.4, p<.05.
The 550–750 ms time window (late P600). In the lateral analysis, the omnibus ANOVA with topic status, pronoun consistency,
and the topographical factors revealed a marginally significant
main effect of topic status, F(1,23)53.53, 0.05<p<.1, and a significant main effect of pronoun consistency, F(1,23)513.51, p<.005.
The two-way interaction between topic status and pronoun consistency was significant as well, F(1,23)54.47, p<.05. Follow-up
comparisons examining the effects of pronoun consistency in the
topic structure and the nontopic structure separately indicated that
larger positive responses were evoked by the pronouns in the T
+C2 condition than in the T+C+ condition, F(1,23)515.93, p
<.001, but there was no difference for the comparison T2C2 versus T2C+, F(1,23)51.18, p<.1. Moreover, follow-up comparisons
examining the effects of topic status in the consistent and inconsistent conditions separately showed that more positive responses
were evoked by the pronouns in the T+C2 condition than in the
T2C2 condition (see Figures (3 and 4)), F(1,23)55.60, p<.05.
No difference was found for the comparison T+C+ versus T2C+,
F(1,23)<1.
In the midline analysis, ANOVA revealed a marginally significant effect of topic status, F(1,23)52.94, .05<p<.1, and a significant main effect of pronoun consistency, F(1,23)517.29, p<.001.
T+C2 pronouns elicited more positive responses than T+C+ pronouns; T2C2 pronouns elicited more positive responses than
T2C+ pronouns. The interaction between the two factors was not
significant, F(1,23)52.66, p<.1, indicating that the pronoun consistency effect occurred for both the topic-shift and the subjectshift conditions. It is clear from Figures 3 and 4 that the relatively
weak P600 effect for the T2C2 condition versus the T2C+ condition occurred mainly at the posterior electrodes (i.e., Pz and POz), t
(23)52.09, p<.05.
Discussion
The main purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent a
noun phrase at the topic position affects the neurocognitive activity
involved in processing the subsequent pronoun referring to this
antecedent. We compared ERP responses to the pronoun with its
referent at the topic/subject, at the subject, or at the object position.
We found that, in the topic structure with a subordinate causal
clause and a main clause, stronger P600 responses were evoked by
the pronouns referring to the object entities (topic shift/T+C2)
than by the pronouns referring to the topic entities (i.e., the noun at
the topic position: topic continuation/T+C+) in both the 350–550
ms (early P600) and 550–750 ms (late P600) time windows. In the
nontopic structure in which the antecedent was at the subject position, P600 responses to the pronouns referring to the object entities
(subject shift/T2C2) were slightly more positive than P600
responses to the pronouns referring to the subject entities (subject
continuation/T2C+) in the 550–750 ms window but not in the
350–550 ms window. Moreover, the P600 responses to the topicshift pronouns were consistently more positive than the P600
responses to the subject-shift pronouns (see Figure 5 for the topographic distribution of the difference effect), whereas the P600
responses to the topic-continued pronouns did not differ from the
P600 responses to the subject-continued pronouns in either time
window. Additionally, in the early time windows, while topicinconsistent pronouns evoked larger positivities than subjectinconsistent pronouns (in the 180–240 ms time window), subjectinconsistent pronouns evoked larger negativities than topicinconsistent pronouns (in the 270–330 ms time window). These
results revealed a clear preference for topic continuation in the
interpretation of pronouns, indicating that topic is cognitively more
salient than grammatical subject in constraining pronoun resolution
and sentence comprehension.
ERP Modulations and the Neurocognitive Models of
Sentence/Referential Processing
According to the two-stage model of referential processing, as discussed in the introduction, pronoun resolution can be differentiated
into a bonding stage and a resolution stage (Garrod & Sanford,
1994; Garrod & Terras, 2000). While the bonding stage is related
to the manifestation of LAN or Nref, the resolution stage is related
to the appearance of a late positivity (P600). Here in the early time
windows (180–240 ms and 270–330 ms), we did not observe significant differences between the subject-inconsistent and subjectconsistent conditions or between the topic-inconsistent and topicconsistent conditions, although we did find differences between the
subject-inconsistent pronouns and the topic-inconsistent pronouns.
The absence of a consistency effect in the early time window is
consistent with a previous study concerning information structure
and pronoun/referential processing in Chinese (e.g., X. Yang et al.,
2013), where the manipulation of topic status (vs. nontopic status)
or focus status (vs. nonfocus status) of an antecedent had no impact
upon the interpretation of a pronoun/referential expression in the
early time window, although it did modulate the late ERP activities
(e.g., P600).
It was not surprising that we did not find Nref, a sustained negativity, which is generated by referential ambiguity (Van Berkum,
Brown, & Hagoort, 1999). The failure to observe such modulation
is probably due to the absence of referential ambiguity in the present situation, since the two animate antecedents are distinguishable
in gender. It is possible that participants adopt certain strategies (e.
g., bridging inference) to associate the critical pronoun with the
gender-mismatched antecedent. However, the results from the pretests (the cloze probability test and forced-choice test) showed that
such probabilities are quite low; the pronoun referred to a gendermismatched antecedent in less than 13% of the trials in both tests.
Additionally, the failure to find LAN modulation (left anterior
Topic shift and pronoun resolution
negativity) may be associated with the fact that the establishment
of a pronoun-antecedent relation in Chinese was not morphologically sensitive. Moreover, it may also be related with the fact that a
more reduced referential form, namely, the pronoun, rather than an
informative form (e.g., an anaphoric noun phrase) was adopted
here. Previous studies have shown that the mismatch between a
pronoun and its antecedent typically do not elicit increased N400
or LAN responses (Osterhout et al., 1997; Osterhout & Mobley,
1995; X. D. Xu, Jiang, & Zhou, 2013; X. Li & Zhou, 2010).
The presence of a P600 but not a LAN/Nref or N400 effect in
the current study as well as other referential studies (Molinaro,
Kim, Vespignani, & Job, 2008; Osterhout et al., 1997; Osterhout &
Mobley, 1995; X. D. Xu, Jiang, & Zhou, 2013) is not easily accommodated by the two-stage model, as it is assumed that the bonding
process takes place automatically and is regularly manifested by
some early negative effects, reflecting an initial operation of establishing a link between the pronoun and the antecedent. Instead,
these findings seem to be more compatible with the more flexible
one-stream model, for example, the MRC model (mental representation of what is being communicated; Brouwer et al., 2012).
According to this model, sentence processing is composed of memory retrieval (or linking process) and an integration process. The
retrieval process is manifested by some early negativities, reflecting the difficulty of a searching process. More specifically, it is
assumed that the searching of the lexical features of a word from
the semantic memory system leads to an N400, whereas the searching of the referential features from the situation model leads to an
Nref (Hoeks & Brouwer, 2014). Based on this account, the absence
of N400 or Nref during pronoun resolution may be because
retrieval of the referent features (e.g., semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, etc.) is equally facilitated by the preceding context, since
there were no differences concerning lexical-/morphosyntactic
information or referential ambiguities across experimental conditions. More importantly, as proposed by Schumacher and colleagues (e.g., Wang & Schumacher, 2013) in a similar model (i.e.,
the syntax-discourse model), the processes of retrieving (or linking)
and integration (or updating) may take place independently, and
the early negative response (e.g., N400/Nref) and the late positivity
do not necessarily co-occur. The independent nature of these two
processes means that the P600 effect can occur either with or without an early modulation, depending on a number of factors including the cross-language differences in establishing referential
dependency (e.g., whether it distinguishes morphological agreement) as well as the difference of mental efforts required to retrieve
the antecedent entities (e.g., whether there was referential ambiguity, Hoeks & Brouwer, 2014).
Importantly, we did find a P600 effect when the pronoun was
resolved toward the nontopic object, relative to a topic entity. As
outlined previously, topic encodes what the utterance is about and
has high accessibility. If the pronoun has to be interpreted as referring to a less accessible entity (i.e., object, as opposed to topic),
this topic shift would instigate conflict with the topic-based bias (i.
e., the tendency of linking the pronoun with the topic) and the bias
due to the implicit causality of the NP1 verb (i.e., the tendency of
linking the pronoun with the first noun), thereby disrupting the construction of discourse coherence. A reinterpretation process is then
initiated to resolve the conflict and to find an alternative antecedent
(Ye & Zhou, 2009). This interpretation is consistent with many previous studies on pronoun resolution and on the effect of topicality
upon anaphor resolution. For example, Van Berkum, Koornneef,
Otten, and Nieuwland (2007) found that, relative to the consistent
condition, if the pronoun’s gender information was inconsistent
139
with the implicit causality bias of a preceding verb (e.g., David
praised Linda because he …), this referential incoherence would
result in a P600 effect. When topic continuation was interrupted by
the introduction of a new entity, namely, an NP anaphor (Hirotani
& Schumacher, 2011; Hung & Schumacher, 2012), the conflict
between the new input and the expected information led to
enhanced P600 responses. Thus, the P600 effect most likely
reflects the updating of discourse representation to include the new
entity.
As discussed already, P600 can be divided into two subprocesses: early and late. The early part has been interpreted as reflecting the difficulty of a diagnosis (for the possibility of reanalysis) in
situations where there are semantic or grammatical problems
(Kaan, 2002; see Molinaro, Barber, & Carreiras, 2011, for a relevant review), whereas the late part reflects the cost of reanalysis or
integration operations (Friederici, 1998; Kaan, 2002; Kaan et al.,
2007). In the present study, however, the early occurrence of P600
in the topic-shift condition was unlikely to be produced by a diagnosing operation as there were no outright syntactic violations but
rather referential dispreference (vs. preference). Instead, the early
appearance of P600 in the topic-shift condition but not the topicconsistent or subject-shift conditions could reflect the process of
evaluating/checking the link between the pronoun and its actual
antecedent: evaluating a gender-matched but dispreferred coreferential relation is more demanding than evaluating both gendermatched and preferred (or without clear preference) coreferential
relation. This dissociation in evaluating referential preference in
the early P600 phrase in turn leads to the subsequent dissociation in
the integration process: topic-shift reference is more difficult to be
integrated into a coherent representation than topic-continuation or
subject-shift reference, and thereby elicits more pronounced
positivities.
Compared with the previous studies, the current study demonstrated that topic shift affects not only the resolution of a semantically rich anaphoric expression such as a full NP anaphor (Hirotani
& Schumacher, 2011; Hung & Schumacher, 2012) but also the
resolution of a semantically impoverished anaphoric expression,
such as a pronoun, suggesting that the strength of topic continuity
is strong enough to foreground one of the referents such that the
other potential referents (e.g., the object NP) are momentarily
unavailable as candidate antecedents.
Topic Shift Versus Subject Shift on Pronoun Resolution
The topic-inconsistent pronoun evoked a large, broadly distributed
P600 effect relative to the topic-consistent pronoun. In contrast, the
subject-shift pronoun evoked almost indistinguishable P600
responses relative to the subject-consistent pronoun, indicating that
subject shift has only limited impact on pronoun resolution in Chinese. Importantly, the differential effects for the topic-shift and
subject-shift pronouns demonstrated that a topic exerts stronger
constraints on the sentence comprehension processes than a subject
and that readers have more difficulty in processing sentences with
topic incoherence than sentences with subject incoherence. This
argument was further supported by the direct comparison between
the topic-shift and subject-shift conditions (see Figure 5), which
showed increased P600 responses to the former. This finding for
the increased difficulty in processing topic incoherence over subject incoherence was also consistent with the offline acceptability
ratings, which showed that sentences with topic shift were less
acceptable than sentences with subject shift (see Table 1), suggesting that pragmatically encoded topicality can exert stronger
X. Xu and X. Zhou
140
constraints than grammatical subject in the process of establishing
a coreferential relation.
The neural and behavioral dissociations between processing
topic-shift versus subject-shift coreferential relations can be interpreted within the framework of the principle of relevance proposed
by Strawson (1964). According to this account, the realization of
discourse coherence is based on the principle of relevance. Topic
and subject play different roles in the process of establishing a
coherent discourse representation. Topic is seen as a matter of
standing interest or concern. A statement about a topic is considered informative only if it conveys information relevant to aspects
of the topic. In contrast, subject exerts fewer constraints on what
the following utterance should be about. This functional difference
is consistent with the linguistic argument that topic and subject are
two notions encoded at pragmatic and syntactic levels respectively
(Chu, 1998; Shi, 2000). As a syntactic notion, the subject is immediately related to the verb in the main predication and controls
grammatical processes related to the verb (e.g., selection constraints). As a discourse/pragmatic notion, the topic generally corresponds to what the sentence/discourse is about and provides the
referential or pragmatic framework with respect to which the predication is evaluated (Shi, 2000). A pronoun referring to a nontopic
object NP as opposed to the topic NP would severely violate the
principle of relevance and disrupt the sentence comprehension process. In line with the present findings, a number of studies have
demonstrated that other pragmatically encoded information statuses, such as focus, also play an important role in the interpretation
of the pronoun, especially when the referential expression and its
referent are in different clauses (Kaiser, Runner, Sussman, &
Tanenhaus, 2009; Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006).
The comparison of P600 amplitudes between the subject-shift
and the subject-continuation conditions only showed a mild subject
preference effect. This seems to be at odds with the observation of
a clear preference for subject reference over object reference in our
offline tests (e.g., the sentence completion task and the acceptability rating test) and with the findings in previous behavioral studies
in which a pronoun is preferentially interpreted as referring to a
subject over an object antecedent (Arnold et al., 2000; Cowles
et al., 2007; Gelormini-Lezama & Almor, 2011; Crawley, Stevenson, & Kleinman, 1990; Kaiser, 2011; C.-L. Yang et al., 2003).
This discrepancy may be associated with the differences in both the
materials and the designs between these studies. On the one hand,
most of the studies showing a subject preference effect adopted
more extended texts in which repeated mentions of the initial sentence subject made it function as the topic of the passage (Arnold
et al., 2000; Cowles et al., 2007; C.-L. Yang et al., 1999, 2003).
This situation is more similar to the manipulation of topic (continuation vs. shift) rather than the manipulation of subject (continuation
vs. shift) in the current study. On the other hand, the offline methods (Gelormini-Lezama & Almor, 2011; C.-L. Yang et al., 1999,
2003), including the pretests in this study, measure the effect generated by the whole sentence containing the pronoun, whereas the
recording of ERPs only measures the effect generated on the pronoun by its relationship with its antecedent.
One might argue that the interaction between sentence type and
pronoun consistency on the P600, that is, the presence of a P600
effect for topic shift but not for subject shift, was due to a difference in structural sequence for the referent (the first noun) of the
pronoun. The first noun preceded the subordinator (i.e., yinwei,
because) in the topic structure but followed the subordinator in the
nontopic structure. Although we cannot completely rule out this
account, we point out that if this structural sequence has a general
effect on pronoun resolution, we should have observed a difference
in P600 responses to the pronouns between the topic-continuation
and subject-continuation conditions. But, we did not observe this
predicted difference.
The absence of differences between the topic-continuation and
subject-continuation conditions, both in ERP responses and in
acceptability ratings, seemed to be contradictory to the argument
that topic exerts stronger constraints than subject on establishing a
coreferential relationship. However, it should be noted that two factors made the subject NP in the subject-continuation condition a
highly accessible entity in discourse comprehension. Firstly, the
subject was the first-mentioned NP in a sentence, and it had higher
accessibility than the object NP during pronoun resolution. Secondly, the subject-biased implicit causality of the verbs used in the
critical sentences also made the subject a more likely antecedent
than the object NP for the subsequent pronoun. These combined
forces might have made the subject an easily accessible entity for
pronoun resolution.
To get a clearer picture of the relation between topichood and
pronoun resolution, future studies could adopt object-biased or
even nonbiased verbs to examine the potential influence of the
verb-based implicit causality on referential processing. Moreover,
future studies may be conducted to examine whether topic preference during pronoun resolution is apparent when the topichood is
assigned to the grammatical object rather than subject, for example,
by using the noncanonical OSV structure. Finally, to gain further
insight into the relationship between information status and pronoun resolution, another interesting line for future research is to
examine whether the assignment of a focus status exerts similar or
different neural modulations on pronoun interpretation.
Conclusion
By putting a potential antecedent NP either at the topic/subject or
at the subject position and by having the pronoun in the main
clause refer to the topic (topic continuation), the subject (subject
continuation), or the object NP in the subordinate clause (topic or
subject shift), we found that, compared with either the topiccontinuation condition or the subject-shift condition, the pronouns
in the topic-shift condition elicited stronger and earlier P600
responses. This finding demonstrates that topic shift, with the pronoun referring to the object NP as opposed to the topic noun,
requires higher processing costs in the resolution stage of referential processing, although not in the earlier bonding stage of processing, and that topic has a privileged cognitive status relative to other
sentential entities in constraining the upcoming information.
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