@conference {4725,
	title = {Topicality-based vs. exposure-based preferences in pronoun resolution in French: Evidence from questionnaires and eye-movements},
	year = {2016},
	month = {09/2016},
	abstract = {<p>It has been observed that in French sentences such as \&$\#$39;The facteur a appel\&eacute; le pirate avant qu\&$\#$39;il rentre \&agrave; la maison\&$\#$39; (\&$\#$39;The postman called the pirate before he went home\&$\#$39;), the N2 (the pirate) is strongly preferred as the antecedent of the ambiguous pronoun. This N2-preference in French has been explained by the fact that speakers take into account an alternative non-finite construction that is available in the language (\&$\#$39;avant de rentrer \&agrave; la maison\&$\#$39;, \&$\#$39;before going home\&$\#$39;) and that unambiguously refers to the N1.\&nbsp;<br />
In a questionnaire and a Visual World eye-tracking experiment, we tested whether the explicit topicalization of the object by means of a passive construction (\&$\#$39;Le pirate a \&eacute;t\&eacute; appel\&eacute; par le facteur...\&$\#$39;) can change the N2-preference in favor of an N1-preference. Despite the fact that the non-finite construction is an unambiguous alternative for the active as well as the passive sentences, we observed a significant increase of N1-preferences in passive compared to active constructions in both the questionnaire (p\&lt;.0001) and the Visual World experiment (p\&lt;.01). These results suggest that pronoun interpretation preferences based on the frequency and availability of alternative constructions can be overridden when a referent is explicitly marked as the topic.</p>
},
	author = {Israel de la Fuente and Schimke, Sarah and Coralie Vincent and Barbara Hemforth and Colonna, Saveria}
}
