Ambiguity avoidance in reflexive dependencies: Evidence from Romanian

The choice of a referring expression targeting a previously introduced discourse referent is affected by its potential ambiguity in a given context (Fukumura et al., 2013; Hwang, 2020): speakers use fewer pronouns in contexts where they would be ambiguous. In this work we investigate whether this effect extends to reflexive pronouns, whose distribution is typically governed by strict syntactic constraints, i.e. the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981; Büring, 2005). To ask this question, we turn to Romanian. Unlike English, the regular Romanian pronouns ea/el ‘her/him’ can corefer with a local referential antecedent (Luna talked about her), and be bound by local quantificational antecedents (Every girl talked about her). However, Romanian also has unambiguous reflexive expressions that may also be used in these contexts. We report two production experiments in Romanian investigating the effect of contextual ambiguity on the choice of referring expression for reflexive dependences with both referential (Experiment 1, e.g. Luna) as well as quantificational antecedents (Experiment 2, e.g. every girl), using a variant of the gender match paradigm used in previous work (Arnold, 2010). We find that, in unambiguous contexts, regular pronouns were the preferred form for reflexive and non reflexive dependencies in both experiments. However, whenever a regular pronoun would be formally ambiguous, speakers chose them less often, preferring instead unambiguous reflexive pronouns. Our results show: (1) like reference to non-local antecedents (Ariel, 1990, 2001; Arnold, 2010), intrasentential reference is also sensitive to discourse considerations, and (2) that potential discourse ambiguity impacts the choice of a referring expression irrespective of whether the dependency is achieved syntactically, i.e. bound variable dependencies, or via discourse computations, i.e. (local) coreference.

Binding into Character

Since Kaplan's “Demonstratives,” it has become common to distinguish between the character and content of an expression, where the content of an expression is what it contributes to “what is said” by sentences containing that expression, and the character gives a rule for determining, in a context, the content of an expression. A tacit assumption of theories of character has been that character is autonomous from content - that semantic evaluation starts with character, adds context, and then derives content. One consequence of this autonomy thesis is that the rules for character can contain no variables bound by content-level operators elsewhere in the sentence. Tacit appeal to this consequence features essentially both in Jason Stanley's recent argument, in “Context and Logical Form,” that all contextual ambiguity must be linked to “elements in the actual syntactic structure of the sentence uttered”, and in my arguments against character-based theories of complex demonstratives in my “Complex Demonstratives.“

The Impact of Contextual Ambiguity on the Interpretation and Recall of Child Sexual Abuse Media Reports

Previous research indicates that approximately 40% of child sexual abuse media reports areambiguous in the sense that information relating to the nature of abuse, the identity of the perpetrator,and/or the location of abuse is not specified. This research examined the impact of suchcontextual ambiguity on the recall and interpretation of child sexual abuse media reports. The189 respondents were recruited through media appeals and presented with one of three versionsof a child sexual abuse press report (stereotype congruent, stereotype incongruent, or contextuallyambiguous). Respondents were asked to provide written descriptions of their thoughts andfeelings about abuse incidents, which were analyzed for attributional content. Recall wasassessed after a 2-week interval. Results indicate that stereotypes affect the recall and interpretationof child sexual abuse media reports in the presence of contextually ambiguous individuatinginformation but not in the presence of nonstereotypic information that is contextuallyunambiguous.