Structural and Pragmatic Constraints on the Interpretation of Reflexives and Pronouns

University Of Rochester, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. Jeffrey T. Runner and Michael K. Tanenhaus will conduct three years of linguistic research examining how participants interpret two important classes of referring words: pronouns and reflexives. The project will use a lightweight head-mounted eye tracker to monitor eye movements as participants identify a picture in a scene while listening to descriptions of the depicted activities (e.g., "John told Bill about the picture of himself."). Which objects participants look at, and when they look at them, provides evidence about which referents they are considering as they interpret the referring words. The goals of this research are to (a) investigate the interpretation of these referring words with on-line tasks rather than explicit judgments; (b) evaluate the extent to which grammatical factors define the initial set of referents for pronouns and reflexives; (c) examine the interaction of grammatical factors with pragmatic and discourse factors; and (d) explore the extent to which the potential set of referents for pronouns and reflexives is mutually exclusive. The results of this research will be important for understanding how people assign reference, which is a central goal of current research in theoretical and applied linguistics. Reference resolution is one of the most central and challenging problems in developing efficient language understanding systems, including systems that are being developed for bio-medical applications. Difficulties in reference resolution are also associated with some types of language difficulties that arise due to brain damage. Information about the timing of eye movements and speech will also inform scientists who are developing computer-based language understanding systems that use eye movements to help resolve ambiguous words and referring expressions.