{"pk":31782,"title":"Strategies in Pronoun Comprehension","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The aim of this study was to distinguish bet-\nween three heuristic strategies proposed to ac-\ncount for the assignment of ambiguous prono-\nuns: a subject assignment strategy, a paral-\nlel function strategy and a pwallel order-of-\nmention strategy. According to the subject\nassignment strategy a pronoun is assigned to\na preceding subject noun phrase. A parallel\nfunction strategy predicts that a pronoun will\nbe assigned to a noun phrase with a peirallel\ngrzunmatical function whereas a parallel order\nstrategy predicts that a pronoun will be a as-\nsigned to a noun phrase in a parallel position\nin a previous clause. These strategies were te-\nsted by examining the interpretation of ambi-\nguous subject and non-subject pronouns. T h e\nresults showed a bias to assign a pronoun to a\npreceding subject, suggesting the operation of\na subject assignment strategy. However, this\nbias was reversed for non-subject pronouns.\nThese pronouns showed a bias to preceding\nnon-subjects with parallel grammatical roles,\nthus supporting a parallel function hypothe-\nsis. Finally, the subject assignment bias was\nreduced w h e n a non-subject pronoun had a dif-\nferent grammaticaJ role from the non-subject\nantecedent, thus supporting a parallel order-of-\nmention strategy. W e conclude that all three\nstrategies m a y constrain the assignment of am-\nbiguous pronouns.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Submitted Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8893q98p","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Rosemary","middle_name":"J.","last_name":"Stevenson","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Durham","department":""},{"first_name":"Alexander","middle_name":"W . R .","last_name":"Nelson","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Edinburgh","department":""},{"first_name":"Keith","middle_name":"","last_name":"Stenning","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Edinburgh","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"1993-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/31782/galley/22850/download/"}]}