Pronoun Interpretation as a Side Effect of Discourse Coherence

Recent story completion studies (Arnold 2001, Rohde et al. 2006) show that passages exhibiting different coherence relations yield different patterns of pronoun interpretation. These results predict that a shift in the distribution of coherence relations in participant responses ought to induce a shift in the distribution of pronoun interpretations. Experiment 1 manipulates the coherence distribution by varying the direct object in Rohde et al.’s original stimuli. We find that the likelihood of a pronoun referring to a specific referent varies by relation and that the conditional probabilities (p(referent|coherence)) remain consistent across conditions. In Experiment 2, we vary only the instructions, having participants write continuations that answer either the question ‘Why’ (Explanation relation) or ‘What happened next?’ (Occasion). As predicted, both pronoun interpretation and the coherence distribution differ significantly by instruction type, and the pattern of pronoun interpretation corresponds directly to the distribution of coherence relations. Models of pronoun interpretation that ignore discourse coherence relationships cannot account for results like these.