Theme: Semantics and Structural types of pronoun. Plan

Predictions for eye movement patterns—Our expectation is that eye movement patterns in both the reflexive conditions and the pronoun conditions will show significant sensitivity to the subject/object distinction and also to the source/perceiver distinction, due to eyemovements being a more sensitive measure than off-line responses. Existing approaches to sentence processing make different predictions regarding the timecourse of the source/perceiver effects. If we extend two-stage, syntax-first theories of processing (e.g. Frazier & Fodor, 1978) directly to picture NPs, the prediction is that the initial stages of processing for both pronouns and reflexives will be guided only by structural information. If this claim is combined with the results of Experiments 1 and 2a, the prediction is that eye movements will reveal an initial stage where pronoun interpretation is driven only
by the anti-subject constraint and reflexive interpretation only by the subject constraint. The effects of the source constraint for reflexives and the perceiver constraint for pronouns are predicted to be delayed until a later stage of processing. Other research focusing specifically on Binding Theory, in particular Nicol & Swinney (1989) and Sturt (2003), also argues for early effects of structural (specifically Binding Theoretic) constraints (but see Badecker & Straub, 2002). However, given claims that possessorless picture NPs are outside the purview of Binding Theory (e.g. Pollard & Sag, 1992), it is not clear whether these particular theories apply to the sentences we tested.
However, if we combine the results of Experiments 1 and 2b with the sizeable body of recent research showing that real-time language processing is continuously guided by multiple weighted constraints (e.g. MacDonald, Pearlmutter & Seidenberg, 1994; Trueswell, Tanenhaus & Garnsey, 1994; see also Badecker & Straub, 2002 on Binding Theory in particular), it seems likely that we will see early effects of structural and semantic constraints guiding the resolution of both pronouns and reflexives. The off-line data from Experiments 1 and 2a indicate that
reflexives and pronouns exhibit an asymmetrical sensitivity to structural and semantic information, which leaves open at least two possibilities for the real-time interpretation of these forms: (i) The asymmetrical sensitivity is a fundamental property of reflexives and pronouns that emerges early during processing or (ii) the asymmetry is a late effect, and the initial rocessing of pronouns and reflexives is fundamentally alike, guided by structural and semantic information to equal degrees.