A Study of Zero Anaphora Resolution in Chinese Discourse: From the Perspective of Psycholinguistics
Anaphora is the main linguistic means to establish discourse coherence, and anaphora resolution is the psychological process to maintain this coherence. Chinese discourse is characterized with providing multiplicity of linguistic clues to readers by employing various referential apparatuses such as...
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2021-10-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.663168/full |
| _version_ | 1818739063197270016 |
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| author | Ning Yang Jingyu Zhang Lijun Ma Zhi Lu Zhi Lu |
| author_facet | Ning Yang Jingyu Zhang Lijun Ma Zhi Lu Zhi Lu |
| author_sort | Ning Yang |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Anaphora is the main linguistic means to establish discourse coherence, and anaphora resolution is the psychological process to maintain this coherence. Chinese discourse is characterized with providing multiplicity of linguistic clues to readers by employing various referential apparatuses such as pronoun anaphora, zero anaphora, and so on. As a way of avoiding repeated reference to an object that is mentioned beforehand, zero anaphora is frequently employed in discourse. The production and resolution of zero anaphora largely concerns some constraints underlying psychological mechanisms. We particularly focus on zero anaphora resolution in the present study to try to discover some specific aspects of the underlying mechanism, hoping to find out some factors unique to the resolution process. We designed the first two experiments to probe into the psychological reality when participants were presented with sentences containing either pronoun anaphora or zero anaphora or both under discourse condition with topic continuity in Experiment 1a and topic discontinuity in Experiment 1b. We did not find any significant difference in the reaction time between zero anaphora resolution and pronoun anaphora resolution, indicating that zero anaphora possibly works within the processing mechanism on which pronoun anaphora resolution depends. However, we found significantly longer time in reading the first sentence in any of the discourse, showing that the first-mention effect exists in anaphora resolution. We further explored the time course of zero anaphora resolution by measuring the reaction time during the period when participants read sentences that varied according to the location where zero anaphora occurred under two conditions: topic continuity (Experiment 2a) vs. topic discontinuity (Experiment 2b). The strategies of searching for the referential information were found divergent: the exhaustive searching strategy was adopted when the topics within a discourse were kept continuous and the heuristic searching strategy was employed when the topics were discontinuous. The design of Experiment 5 took the factor of voice type and situation consistency into consideration, investigating in what way do those factors influence the resolution of zero anaphora. The voice type, according to the results, plays a significant role for its exclusively close relationship with the first-mention effect. |
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| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-18T01:18:52Z |
| publishDate | 2021-10-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-f5f4ceeaa0f849d5ab657cdd583225582022-12-21T21:25:53ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782021-10-011210.3389/fpsyg.2021.663168663168A Study of Zero Anaphora Resolution in Chinese Discourse: From the Perspective of PsycholinguisticsNing Yang0Jingyu Zhang1Lijun Ma2Zhi Lu3Zhi Lu4School of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, ChinaSchool of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, ChinaSchool of Public Health and Management, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, ChinaSchool of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, ChinaCenter for Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, ChinaAnaphora is the main linguistic means to establish discourse coherence, and anaphora resolution is the psychological process to maintain this coherence. Chinese discourse is characterized with providing multiplicity of linguistic clues to readers by employing various referential apparatuses such as pronoun anaphora, zero anaphora, and so on. As a way of avoiding repeated reference to an object that is mentioned beforehand, zero anaphora is frequently employed in discourse. The production and resolution of zero anaphora largely concerns some constraints underlying psychological mechanisms. We particularly focus on zero anaphora resolution in the present study to try to discover some specific aspects of the underlying mechanism, hoping to find out some factors unique to the resolution process. We designed the first two experiments to probe into the psychological reality when participants were presented with sentences containing either pronoun anaphora or zero anaphora or both under discourse condition with topic continuity in Experiment 1a and topic discontinuity in Experiment 1b. We did not find any significant difference in the reaction time between zero anaphora resolution and pronoun anaphora resolution, indicating that zero anaphora possibly works within the processing mechanism on which pronoun anaphora resolution depends. However, we found significantly longer time in reading the first sentence in any of the discourse, showing that the first-mention effect exists in anaphora resolution. We further explored the time course of zero anaphora resolution by measuring the reaction time during the period when participants read sentences that varied according to the location where zero anaphora occurred under two conditions: topic continuity (Experiment 2a) vs. topic discontinuity (Experiment 2b). The strategies of searching for the referential information were found divergent: the exhaustive searching strategy was adopted when the topics within a discourse were kept continuous and the heuristic searching strategy was employed when the topics were discontinuous. The design of Experiment 5 took the factor of voice type and situation consistency into consideration, investigating in what way do those factors influence the resolution of zero anaphora. The voice type, according to the results, plays a significant role for its exclusively close relationship with the first-mention effect.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.663168/fullzero anaphora resolutionpsychological realitytime coursetopic continuitysituation consistency |
| spellingShingle | Ning Yang Jingyu Zhang Lijun Ma Zhi Lu Zhi Lu A Study of Zero Anaphora Resolution in Chinese Discourse: From the Perspective of Psycholinguistics Frontiers in Psychology zero anaphora resolution psychological reality time course topic continuity situation consistency |
| title | A Study of Zero Anaphora Resolution in Chinese Discourse: From the Perspective of Psycholinguistics |
| title_full | A Study of Zero Anaphora Resolution in Chinese Discourse: From the Perspective of Psycholinguistics |
| title_fullStr | A Study of Zero Anaphora Resolution in Chinese Discourse: From the Perspective of Psycholinguistics |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Study of Zero Anaphora Resolution in Chinese Discourse: From the Perspective of Psycholinguistics |
| title_short | A Study of Zero Anaphora Resolution in Chinese Discourse: From the Perspective of Psycholinguistics |
| title_sort | study of zero anaphora resolution in chinese discourse from the perspective of psycholinguistics |
| topic | zero anaphora resolution psychological reality time course topic continuity situation consistency |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.663168/full |
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