Sign language anaphora is realized very differently from its spoken language counterpart. In simple cases, an antecedent is associated with a locus in signing space, and an anaphoric link is obtained by pointing towards that locus to recover its semantic value. It has been argued that this mechanism is an overt realization of the device of coindexation in formal syntax and semantics. Summarizin...

The goal of the paper is to try to account for an interesting binding phenomenon, namely the fact that pronouns sometimes appear to be bound by universal quantifiers out of islands. Specifically, my claim is that the appearance of binding is an illusion which results from the fact that pronouns can stand for universal quantifiers, i.e. there is a new type of pronouns of laziness. However, the d...

The aim of this paper is to report the distribution of Spanish zero pronouns in three different genres: legal, encyclopaedic and instructional. The Z-corpora were created for this purpose and a sample of 1043 zero pronouns was annotated. The most salient patterns of distribution are compared for each genre, and some relevant issues concerning the use of zero pronouns are described in relation t...

In this paper we propose a cognitive model that simulates the acquisition of object pronouns. The model will be implemented to generate precise and testable predictions about the comprehension and production of object pronouns. During sentence processing, the model incrementally builds a structural representation of the sentence, and the model incrementally constructs a discourse representation...

Many European languages have two second person pronouns, one for informal and one for formal address, such as French tu and vous, respectively.1 Such pronouns pose an interesting problem for number agreement. A second person formal subject pronoun triggers plural agreement on the finite verb regardless of whether the referent is one addressee or multiple addressees. Number agreement on non-fini...

Recent research suggests that pronoun interpretation is guided by the semantic coherence relations between clauses. However, it is not yet wellunderstood whether coherence effects extend to other anaphoric expressions beyond pronouns. We report an experiment on German, a language in which human antecedents can be referred to both with personal and demonstrative pronouns. How do anaphoric demons...

BACKGROUND The present paper discusses the lexical and grammatical peculiarities of English language medical case reports, taking into account their communicative purposes and intentions. METHODS The objective of the research is to clarify the principal mechanisms of producing an effective English language medical case report and thus to provide recommendations and guidelines for medical prof...

The production and interpretation of pronouns involves the identification of a mental referent and, in connected speech or text, a discourse antecedent. One of the few overt signals of the relationship between a pronoun and its antecedent is agreement in features such as number and grammatical gender. To examine how speakers create these signals, two experiments tested conceptual, lexical, and ...

A method of anaphoral resolution of zero pronouns in Japanese language texts using the verbal semantic attributes is suggested. This method focuses attention on the semantic attributes of verbs and examines the context from the relationship between the semantic attributes of verbs governing zero pronouns and the semantic attributes of verbs governing their referents. The semantic attributes of ...

Although we usually have no trouble finding the right antecedent for a pronoun, the co-reference relations between pronouns and antecedents in everyday language are often 'formally' ambiguous. But a pronoun is only really ambiguous if a reader or listener indeed perceives it to be ambiguous. Whether this is the case may depend on at least two factors: the language processing skills of an indivi...