The findings indicate that the calculation of the referential candidates' prominence (backward-looking function) is guided by thematic role and positional information. Time-locked to pronoun-onset, the ERPs revealed a general biphasic N400-Late Positivity for d-pronouns over personal pronouns with further subtle interactions of the prominence-lending cues in the early time window. non-canonical) in the context sentences to vary the antecedent's prominence. dative experiencer verbs) and the thematic role order (canonical vs. der), we varied the verb type (active accusative verbs vs. In addition to the factor pronoun type ( er vs. We tested the comprehension of personal and d-pronouns following context sentences containing two potential antecedents. der) and assesses the impact of two prominence features of the antecedent, thematic role and sentential position, as well as neurophysiological correlates of backward- and forward-looking functions of referential expressions. In Experiment 1, we present an ERP study that examines the time course of processing personal and d-pronouns in German ( er vs.
While (unstressed) personal pronouns are the default means to indicate coreference with the most prominent discourse entity (backward-looking function) and typically mark the maintenance of the current topic, demonstratives are used to refer to a less prominent entity and serve the additional forward-looking function of signaling a possible topic shift. Personal pronouns and demonstratives contribute differently to the encoding of information in the mental model and they serve distinct backward- and forward-looking functions.
Department of German Language and Literature I, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.Schumacher *, Jana Backhaus and Manuel Dangl
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