The use of pronominal case in English sentence interpretation

This study examined adult English native speakers’ processing of sentences in which pronominal case marking conflicts with word order. Previous research has shown that English speakers rely heavily on word order for assigning case roles during sentence interpretation. However, in terms of cue reliability measures, we should expect English pronominal case to be nearly as strong a cue as word order. The current study examined this issue by asking subjects to interpret grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in which case competes with word order. The results indicated that word order remains the strongest cue in English, even when the case-marking cue is available. However, for noncanonical word orders, the case-marking cue had a strong effect on sentence interpretation. In over 40 published studies, the competition model (MacWhinney, 1987, 2005; MacWhinney & Bates, 1989) has been used to study crosslinguistic differences in sentence processing. In these studies, cues such as word order, agreement marking, case marking, or animacy are placed into competition in a crossed factorial (analysis of variance [ANOVA]) design, thereby allowing us to determine the relative patterns of cue strength across languages. The overwhelming majority of these studies have utilized combinations of both grammatical sentences such as the dog chases the bear and ungrammatical sentences such as the bear the dogs chases. These sentences are composed of two full noun phrases (NPs) and a single transitive verb. The participant’s task is to decide which noun is the actor. To date, the only competition model study that has examined processing with pronouns instead of full NPs is McDonald (1986) for Dutch. This emphasis in competition model experiments on sentences with full NPs is potentially a serious problem. Competition model experiments have repeatedly shown that cue strength is a function of cue reliability. However, it could be that this finding does not extend to sentences that combine pronouns with full NPs. We know that full © Cambridge University Press 2010 0142-7164/10 $15.00 Applied Psycholinguistics 31:4 620 Yoshimura & MacWhinney: Pronominal case NPs and pronouns invoke very different processes in terms of coreference and interpretation (Gordon, Grosz, & Gilliom, 1993). Full NPs are more likely to refer to newly mentioned discourse entities, whereas pronouns are mostly used to refer to entities that are given either anaphorically or deictically (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). This means that when we hear a pronoun, we are likely to search for its referent, whereas this may not be necessary for a full NP. In addition, full NPs are often complex and may contain low-frequency words, whereas pronouns are all short, common words. It is possible that these differences have a further impact on processing and cue strength. McDonald’s study of pronominal case marking in Dutch adds support to these concerns. In Dutch, it is possible to use object–verb–subject (OVS) word order in questions, such as Wat zag zij? (literally: what saw she?). It is also possible to use OVS in reversed actives, such as De man zag zij (literally: The man saw she.). In these sentences, the nominative pronoun zij appears after the verb. Although it appears in a noncanonical position, the pronoun zij is still interpreted by adults as the subject. McDonald showed that, despite the high reliability of pronominal case marking in Dutch, children do not depend on this cue until after age 8. Although it is possible to account for this delay as a result of the fact that sentences in which case conflicts with word order are comparatively rare (McDonald & MacWhinney, 1991), it is also possible that pronominal case is being processed in some fundamentally different way from other syntactic, morphological, or lexical cues that have been studied in competition model research. A study of relative clause processing in Dutch by Kaan (2001) adds some further concern. Kaan showed that the presence of the pronoun jullie as the second NP in Dutch relative clause sentences with NP+NP+ V structures tended to weaken the use of an SOV interpretation format, even though the pronoun was not overtly marking case. This type of study suggests that the processing of pronouns could be very different from the processing of nouns. If this type of effect were shown to be generally present, the competition model might have to be revised or even rejected to account for facts regarding the processing of pronouns. We begin this inquiry with a brief review of the status of the word order and pronominal case cues in English. A major finding in competition model studies (MacWhinney, Bates, & Kliegl, 1984) has been that English assigns the role of the agent to the nominal that appears directly before the verb. For example, native English speakers interpret the boy kissed the girl by choosing the boy as the agent. When the girl is moved before the verb in a phrase like the boy the girl kissed, native speakers change their agent interpretation from boy to girl. Although this OSV word order is ungrammatical when it appears by itself, it is grammatical when used within an embedded clause in English, as in I met the boy the girl kissed. It is also acceptable in topicalized constructions (Prince, 1998), such as this ice cream, I like, but the one I had yesterday was terrible. In addition to this primary word order cue of preverbal positioning in the SV pattern, English also relies on a postverbal positioning cue in the VO pattern to cue the role of the direct object. Together, these two cues compose the canonical SVO word order of English. In English, case marking has a very restricted range of application. Although Old English (van Kemenade, 1987) marked case on both the noun and the pronoun, Applied Psycholinguistics 31:4 621 Yoshimura & MacWhinney: Pronominal case the marking of case on the noun was lost during the transition to Middle English. In Modern colloquial English, only pronominal contrasts, such as the one between he and him or the one between she and her, still mark the distinction between the subject and the object. Thus, in the sentence he combed her, the pronouns provide evidence for case assignment by indicating that the actor is a male and the patient is a female. Because the distinction between nominal pronouns like he and she and accusative pronouns like she and her is so consistent in English, we can think of this as a highly reliable, grammaticalized cue (Hopper & Traugott, 1993). However, some dialects permit sentences with accusative pronouns in subject position, as in him caught a bad cold or me and him went to the store. Together, these facts indicate that we need to better understand the actual contribution of pronominal case to sentence interpretation in English. Preverbal positioning and pronominal case are not the only cues to case role assignment in English. Interpretation can also be influenced by cues involving noun animacy and S–V agreement. However, because of the overwhelming strength of the preverbal positioning cue, it is difficult to observe the role of these cues in canonical SVO sentences. However, if we look at the noncanonical VNN order, where preverbal positioning is absent, we can observe these effects more clearly. In sequences such as Examples 1 and 2, listeners are likely to choose “the boy” as the actor because the animacy cue favors the choice of an animate entity as actor. 1. Pushes the boy the marble. 2. Pushes the marble the boy. 3. Pushes the boys the girl. 4. Pushes the girl the boys. Similarly, the effect of the S–V agreement cue can be illustrated by the contrast between Examples 3 and 4 where the agreement match between “girl” and “pushes” favors the choice of “the girl” as the actor over “the boys.” This VNN frame can also be used to illustrate the effects of pronominal case, as in Examples 5 and 6.