Anaphoric Processing of the Null Pronoun in Monolingual Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese: An Online Study

The aim of this paper was to investigate anaphoric processing of the null pronoun in Brazilian Portuguese and determine whether the perception of morphological gender features has a disambiguating effect during the process of reading. This feature enables the anaphoric null pronoun to be interpreted as referring to either the subject or object. We assume the proposal put forth by Carminati (2005) regarding the resolution of the null subject pronoun, which is based on the investigation of the processing of full and null pronouns in Italian. The sample of the present study was composed of 32 speakers of university-level Brazilian Portuguese. The stimuli were temporal adverbial subordinate clauses with the manipulation of the gender feature in the participle as disambiguating information. The authors used the self-paced reading experimental paradigm with a control response. The results were in line with that predicted by the Feature Strength Hypothesis and Antecedent Position Hypothesis put forth by Carminati (2005). References Ariel, M. (1991). The function of accessibility in a theory of grammar. Journal of Pragmatics, 16(5), 443-463. doi: 10.1016/0378-2166(91)90136-L Carminati, M. N. (2002). The processing of Italian subject pronouns. Dissertação de doutoramento, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications. Carminati, M. N. (2005). Processing reflexes of the Feature Hierarchy (Person > Number > Gender) and implications for linguistic theory. Lingua, 115, 259–285. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2003.10.006 Lasnik, H. & Lohndal, T. (2017). Noam Chomsky. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.356 Duarte, M. E. L. (2015) A perda do princípio “Evite Pronome” no Português Brasileiro. Campinas, SP: EDUNICAMP. Filiacia, F. Soracea, A., Carreiras M. (2013) Anaphoric biases of null and overt subjects in Italian and Spanish: a cross-linguistic comparison. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, doi: 10.1080/01690965.2013.801502 Gelormini-Lezama, C., Almor, A. (2011). Repeated names, overt pronouns, and null pronouns in Spanish, Language and Cognitive Processes, 26(3), 437-454. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2010.495234 Gonçalves, A. V. G., Sousa, M. L. (2012). Ciências Da Linguagem: O Fazer Cientifico?. (1. Ed.). São Paulo, SP. Editora Mercado de letras. Grosjean, F. (1996). Living with Two Languages and Two Cultures. In I. Parasnis, Ed. Cultural and language diversity and the deaf experience. (pp. 20-37). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaiser, E., Fedele, E. (2019). Reference resolution: a psycholinguistic perspective. J. Gundel & B. Abbott, (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Reference. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199687305.013.15 Lapertua, M. (2004) Sujeito nulo na aquisição: um parâmetro em mudança – sujeito preenchido na aprendizagem: a eterna tentativa de mudança. Revista do Gelne, 6(1), 141. Limberger, B., Buchweitz, A. (2012). Estudos sobre a relação entre bilinguismo e cognição: o controle inibitório e a memória de trabalho. Letrônica, 5(3), 67-87, Lucchesi, D. (2009). A realização do sujeito pronominal. In D. Lucchesi, A. Baxter, & I. Ribeiro, (Eds.). O português afro-brasileiro (pp. 165-183). Salvador, BA: EDUFBA. Presuss, E. O., Finger, I. F. (2018). A dinâmica do Processamento Bilíngue. Campinas, SP. Pontes Editoras. Veríssimo, V. (2017). A evolução do conceito de parâmetro do sujeito nulo. Entrepalavras, Fortaleza, 7, 76-90. Xavier, G. R. (2006). Português Brasileiro como Segunda Língua: Um Estudo sobre o Sujeito Nulo. Campinas, SP: EDUNICAMP.

“This Isn’t a Promise, It’s a Threat”

Participants had their eye movements recorded as they read vignettes containing implied promises and threats. We observed a reading time penalty when participants read the word “threat” when it anaphorically referred to an implied promise. There was no such penalty when the word “promise” was used to refer to an implied threat. On a later measure of processing we again found a reading time penalty when the word “threat” was used to refer to a promise, but also when the word “promise” was used to refer to a threat. These results suggest that anaphoric processing of such expressions is driven initially by sensitivity to the semantic scope differences of “threats” versus “promises.” A threat can be understood as a type of promise, but a promise cannot be understood as a type of threat. However, this effect was short lived; readers were ultimately sensitive to mismatched meaning, regardless of speech act performed.