@article {6669,
	title = {The Effect of Semantic and Discourse Features on the Use of Null and Overt Subjects - A Quantitative Study of Third Person Subjects in Brazilian Portuguese. },
	journal = {DELTA: Documenta{\c c}{\~a}o de Estudos em Ling{\"u}{\'\i}stica Te{\'o}rica e Aplicada,},
	volume = {36},
	year = {2020},
	doi = {https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1678-460x2020360107},
	author = {Eduardo Correa Soares and Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth}
}
@article {6409,
	title = {The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese},
	journal = {F{\'o}rum Lingu{\'\i}stico},
	volume = {16},
	year = {2019},
	pages = {3579-3600},
	chapter = {3579},
	abstract = {<p>In a corpus study and two acceptability experiments, we investigated whether there is a preference for null or overt subjects with ambiguous (syncretic) and exclusive (unambiguous) verbs in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Previous literature has proposed that BP (i) is deactivating the \&ldquo;Avoid Pronoun Principle\&rdquo; and (ii) is a partially pro-drop language, whose morphosyntactic contexts for null subjects are restricted. The corpus study and the acceptability experiments show that there is an effect of person syncretism in the verbal paradigm on the relative frequency of null subjects and on the acceptability of sentences with null subjects in the first-person singular: there is a tendency to avoid ambiguity due to null subjects with ambiguous verb forms, but only in contexts with competing antecedents. These results are analyzed in the light of a general theory of anaphora resolution (ARIEL, 1990, etc.), as resulting from a calculation taking into account the accessibility of potential antecedents and the cost of the anaphoric form (ALMOR, 1996).</p>
},
	issn = {ISSNe 1984-8412},
	doi = { },
	url = {https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/1984-8412.2019v16n1p3579},
	author = {Eduardo Correa Soares and Philip Miller and Barbara Hemforth}
}
@article {6060,
	title = {Adaptation in Pronoun Resolution: Evidence from Brazilian and European Portuguese},
	journal = {Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition},
	year = {2018},
	abstract = {<p>Previous research accounting for pronoun resolution as a problem of probabilistic inference has not explored the phenomenon of adaptation, whereby the processor constantly tracks and adapts, rationally, to changes in a statistical environment. We investigate whether Brazilian (BP) and European Portuguese (EP) speakers adapt to variations in the probability of occurrence of ambiguous overt and null pronouns, in two experiments assessing resolution towards subject and object referents. For each variety (BP, EP), participants were faced with either the same number of null and overt pronouns (equal distribution), or with an environment with fewer overt (than null) pronouns (unequal distribution). We find that the preference for interpreting overt pronouns as referring back to an object referent (object-biased interpretation) is higher when there are fewer overt pronouns (i.e., in the unequal, relative to the equal distribution condition). This is especially the case for BP, a variety with higher prior frequency and smaller object-biased interpretation of overt pronouns, suggesting that participants adapted incrementally and integrated prior statistical knowledge with the knowledge obtained in the experiment. We hypothesize that comprehenders adapted rationally, with the goal of maintaining, across variations in pronoun probability, the likelihood of subject and object referents. Our findings unify insights from research in pronoun resolution and in adaptation, and add to previous studies in both topics: They provide evidence for the influence of pronoun probability in pronoun resolution, and for an adaptation process whereby the language processor not only tracks statistical information, but uses it to make interpretational inferences.</p>
},
	doi = {http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037\%2Fxlm0000569},
	author = {Eunice Fernandes and Paula Luegi and Eduardo Correa Soares and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth}
}
