Theme: Semantics and Structural types of pronoun. Plan

Discussion—The results of Experiment 3 show that the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in possessed PNPs differs from their interpretation in possessorless PNPs. Reflexives: In possessed PNPs reflexives are guided by a strong possessor constraint. There is no significant effect of the verb manipulation in the picture choice patterns or in the eye movements to the subject and object pictures, although there does appear to be a weak overall pull towards subjects (approx. 8–10% subject-picture choices, regardless of verb). The existence of some subject choices fits with existing work by Keller and Asudeh (2001), Jaeger (2004) and Runner et al. (2003, 2006), which all find that subjects are possible (albeit dispreferred) antecedents for reflexives in possessed PNPs. In fact, the possessor constraint and subject constraint may be related, since subjects and possessors are often regarded as occupying similar structural positions (see e.g. Szabolcsi, 1983; Stowell, 1983; Abney, 1987) —thus, reflexives could be regarded as generally preferring structurally-prominent antecedents.
As a whole, these findings do not support the idea that all structural constraints pattern as an equally-weighted block. Rather, our results show that reflexives are subject to a heavilyweighted possessor constraint, and more weakly influenced by another structural constraint – the subject constraint. The source constraint is presumably too weak, in comparison to the strong possessor constraint, to be detectable in possessed PNPs.
Pronouns: In the pronoun conditions, participants’ picture choices reveal clear effects of a structural anti-possessor constraint and a semantic perceiver constraint. The low rate of possessor choices (in comparison to subject choices) supports an approach in which the antipossessor constraint outweighs the anti-subject constraint, corroborating the findings from the reflexive conditions. Interestingly, eye movements reveal an early, transient possessor preference, followed by the predicted but surprisingly late perceiver preference. In what follows we consider this seemingly unexpected pattern in more detail.