@article {5851, title = {Effects of exposure and information structure in native and non-native pronoun resolution in French.}, journal = {Linguistic Vanguard}, year = {2018}, month = {2018-03-09}, abstract = {

The present study investigated pronoun resolution strategies in French native speakers and in German- speaking learners of French. French and German differ in antecedent preferences in ambiguous constructions such as The postman hit the pirate before he went home: while French shows a N2-preference, German shows a N1-preference. This difference is explained by effects of exposure to an unambiguous alternative construction referring to N1 that exists in French, but not in German (Hemforth et al. 2010, Language specific preferences in anaphor resolution: Exposure or gricean maxims? In Steallan Ohlsson and Richard Catarambone (eds.), 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2218\–2223. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society). In question- naires, we tested French active and passive sentences to investigate (a) whether the L2-learners would apply the same strategy as natives in the active condition (i.e. N2-preference), and (b) whether the explicit topicalization of a referent as a consequence of passivization influences interpretation preferences in both groups (result- ing in more N1 choices). The results show that German learners prefer the N1 more often than the French natives in the active condition. Crucially, the number of N1 choices increased in both groups in the passive condition. These results suggest that L2-learners might have difficulties acquiring strategies based on the fre- quency and availability of alternative constructions in the L2, and provide further evidence for the importance of information-structure-based strategies in L1 and L2 pronoun resolution.

}, doi = { https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0093}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Israel de la Fuente and Sascha Kuck and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {6073, title = {First language influence on second language offline and online ambiguous pronoun resolution}, journal = {Language Learning}, year = {2018}, abstract = {

This study looks at L1 influence on L2 ambiguous pronoun resolution and investigates a) whether L1 influence takes place on the level of the pronominal form (form-dependent influence), and/or on the level of the construction in which the form appears \ (construction-dependent influence) and b) whether effects differ in online compared to offline data. In Experiment 1, we replicated previously observed construction-dependent cross-linguistic differences between French and German (Hemforth et al., 2010), and provided new data on Spanish. In Experiment 2, we assessed offline and online interpretation preferences of intermediate L1 French and L1 Spanish learners of German. Our results provide evidence of form-dependent L1 influence, in that learners transferred a generalized antecedent bias associated with overt pronouns. Moreover, our results extend previous findings (Roberts, Gullberg \& Indefrey, 2008) in showing that L1 influence on L2 pronoun resolution can occur during online processing.

}, doi = { http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/lang.12293}, author = {Schimke, Sarah and Israel de la Fuente and Barbara Hemforth and Colonna, Saveria} } @article {4542, title = {Different effects of focus in intra- and intersentential pronoun resolution in German.}, journal = {Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience}, year = {2015}, month = {08/2015}, abstract = {

It is widely assumed that focused entities are more salient than non-focused ones and consequently, that an antecedent should be particularly available for a pronoun when it is foregrounded in a cleft construction. Contrary to this assumption, however, some studies observed that an antecedent focused by a cleft was less accessible than a non-focused one. We claim that the influence of clefting depends on the position of the ambiguous pronoun: clefted antecedents are only preferred as antecedents of a pronoun when the pronoun and its antecedent are in different discourse units. In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted a questionnaire and a visual world experiment in German in which we manipulated inter- vs. intra-sentential pronoun resolution. Results showed that clefting had different effects depending on the position of the pronoun. We will discuss why these results are consistent with the claim that pronouns preferentially co-refer with the sentence topic.

}, keywords = {eye-tracking, focus, information structure, language comprehension, pronoun resolution, visual world paradigm}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2015.1066510}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {4371, title = {Information structure cues for 4-year-olds and adults: Tracking eye movements to visually presented anaphoric referents}, journal = {Language, Cognition, and Neurosciences}, volume = {29}, year = {2014}, pages = {877-892}, author = {J{\"a}rvikivi, Juhani and Pyykk{\"o}nen-Klauck, Pirita and Schimke, Sarah and Colonna, Saveria and Barbara Hemforth} } @article {4369, title = {Length Matters: Informational Load in Ambiguity Resolution}, journal = {Discours}, volume = {12}, year = {2013}, abstract = {

Dans cet article, nous comparons une approche prosodique avec une approche pragmatique pour rendre compte des effets de la longueur des constituants dans les ambig\üit\és d\’attachement. Augmenter la longueur d\’un constituant a des cons\équences sur l\’information qu\’il v\éhicule\ : plus un constituant est long et moins il est pr\édictible (Levy et Florian, 2007) et plus son co\ût de traitement augmente (Almor, 1999). Suivant les principes n\éo-gric\éens (Levinson, 1987 et\ 1991), augmenter le poids informationnel doit \être justifi\é. Cette justification est plus facilement satisfaite lorsqu\’un constituant long v\éhicule une information nouvelle et/ou qui se rapporte aux \él\éments centraux de l\’\énonc\é. Le co\ût informationnel ne se r\ésume cependant pas \à une simple question de longueur en termes de nombre de caract\ères ou de syllabes mais plus probablement \à la quantit\é d\’information v\éhicul\ée. Dans trois questionnaires, nous comparons l\’effet de l\’augmentation de la longueur d\’un syntagme pr\épositionnel ambigu comme dans [1a/b/c], soit en allongeant le nom de la ville, soit en ajoutant de l\’information au sujet de la ville. Nous observons que seul l\’ajout d\’information augmente la proportion d\’attachement du syntagme pr\épositionnel au constituant central de l\’\énonc\é. Ces r\ésultats sont discut\és \à la lumi\ère des facteurs prosodiques et pragmatiques qui peuvent rendre compte des effets de longueur observ\és sur les pr\éf\érences d\’attachement.
[1] Pierre a rencontr\é le docteur de l\’avocat a.\ d\’Apt. /\ b.\ d\’Aix-en-Provence /\ c.\ de la magnifique ville d\’Apt.

}, issn = {ISSN {\'e}lectronique 1963-1723}, doi = {DOI : 10.4000/discours.8780}, author = {Barbara Hemforth and Colonna, Saveria and Petrone, Caterina and D{\textquoteright}Imperio, Mariapaola} } @article {4370, title = {Information structure effects on anaphora resolution in German and French: A cross-linguistic study of pronoun resolution}, journal = {Linguistics}, volume = {55}, year = {2012}, pages = {991-1013}, author = {Colonna, Saveria and Schimke, Sarah and Barbara Hemforth} }