Accessibility and Referential Choice: Personal Pronouns and D-pronouns in Written German
We present a corpus study and a production experiment that investigated the choice between two types of pronouns in written German – personal pronouns and so-called d-pronouns, which have properties of both personal and demonstrative pronouns. The existing research concerned with these pronouns has...
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| Format: | Article |
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Presses universitaires de Caen
2016-09-01
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| Series: | Discours |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/discours/9188 |
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| author | Yvonne Portele Markus Bader |
| author_facet | Yvonne Portele Markus Bader |
| author_sort | Yvonne Portele |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | We present a corpus study and a production experiment that investigated the choice between two types of pronouns in written German – personal pronouns and so-called d-pronouns, which have properties of both personal and demonstrative pronouns. The existing research concerned with these pronouns has focused on language comprehension, in particular with regard to interpretative preferences in the case of referential ambiguity. In contrast to language comprehension, a choice between the two pronominal forms has to be made during language production whether there is an ambiguity or not. The corpus data show that the choice between p(ersonal) pronoun and d-pronoun depends on several factors that have been claimed to determine a referent’s accessibility (Ariel, 1990), in particular givenness and syntactic prominence (syntactic function and clausal position). The corpus study is supplemented by a production experiment that required participants to continue a short text passage with a sentence starting with either a p-pronoun or a d-pronoun. The results of the experiment strengthen the conclusion that several factors determine accessibility which in turn governs pronoun choice. We finally discuss several factors besides accessibility that affect the choice of either a p- or a d-pronoun. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-3527fdb76e2c41dd811840d3b4ec8220 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1963-1723 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2016-09-01 |
| publisher | Presses universitaires de Caen |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Discours |
| spelling | doaj-art-3527fdb76e2c41dd811840d3b4ec82202025-01-30T09:52:58ZengPresses universitaires de CaenDiscours1963-17232016-09-011810.4000/discours.9188Accessibility and Referential Choice: Personal Pronouns and D-pronouns in Written GermanYvonne PorteleMarkus BaderWe present a corpus study and a production experiment that investigated the choice between two types of pronouns in written German – personal pronouns and so-called d-pronouns, which have properties of both personal and demonstrative pronouns. The existing research concerned with these pronouns has focused on language comprehension, in particular with regard to interpretative preferences in the case of referential ambiguity. In contrast to language comprehension, a choice between the two pronominal forms has to be made during language production whether there is an ambiguity or not. The corpus data show that the choice between p(ersonal) pronoun and d-pronoun depends on several factors that have been claimed to determine a referent’s accessibility (Ariel, 1990), in particular givenness and syntactic prominence (syntactic function and clausal position). The corpus study is supplemented by a production experiment that required participants to continue a short text passage with a sentence starting with either a p-pronoun or a d-pronoun. The results of the experiment strengthen the conclusion that several factors determine accessibility which in turn governs pronoun choice. We finally discuss several factors besides accessibility that affect the choice of either a p- or a d-pronoun.https://journals.openedition.org/discours/9188anaphoralanguage productioncorpus linguisticsreferential choiceGermanaccessibility |
| spellingShingle | Yvonne Portele Markus Bader Accessibility and Referential Choice: Personal Pronouns and D-pronouns in Written German Discours anaphora language production corpus linguistics referential choice German accessibility |
| title | Accessibility and Referential Choice: Personal Pronouns and D-pronouns in Written German |
| title_full | Accessibility and Referential Choice: Personal Pronouns and D-pronouns in Written German |
| title_fullStr | Accessibility and Referential Choice: Personal Pronouns and D-pronouns in Written German |
| title_full_unstemmed | Accessibility and Referential Choice: Personal Pronouns and D-pronouns in Written German |
| title_short | Accessibility and Referential Choice: Personal Pronouns and D-pronouns in Written German |
| title_sort | accessibility and referential choice personal pronouns and d pronouns in written german |
| topic | anaphora language production corpus linguistics referential choice German accessibility |
| url | https://journals.openedition.org/discours/9188 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT yvonneportele accessibilityandreferentialchoicepersonalpronounsanddpronounsinwrittengerman AT markusbader accessibilityandreferentialchoicepersonalpronounsanddpronounsinwrittengerman |