The non-subject bias of German demonstrative pronouns
-
Peter Bosch✝
Abstract
This paper presents evidence from both corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments regarding the referential preferences of German personal pronouns (er sie, es) and demonstrative pronouns (der die, das). Both types of pronouns are naturally used in German to refer to both animate and inanimate referents, but they appear to have different preferences with respect to their choice of antecedents: While personal pronouns show a slight preference for antecedents which are grammatical subjects, demonstrative pronouns show a strong bias for non-subject antecedents.
Abstract
This paper presents evidence from both corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments regarding the referential preferences of German personal pronouns (er sie, es) and demonstrative pronouns (der die, das). Both types of pronouns are naturally used in German to refer to both animate and inanimate referents, but they appear to have different preferences with respect to their choice of antecedents: While personal pronouns show a slight preference for antecedents which are grammatical subjects, demonstrative pronouns show a strong bias for non-subject antecedents.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Anaphors in text – Introduction vii
-
Anaphors in Cognitive, Text- and Discourse Linguistics
- Indirect anaphora in text 3
- Indirect pronominal anaphora in English and French 21
- Lexical anaphors in Danish and French 37
- Referential collaboration with computers 49
- Reflexivity and temporality in discourse deixis 69
- The function of complex anaphors in texts 81
- Metaphorical anaphors 103
-
The Syntax and Semantic of Anaphors
- Accessibility and definite noun phrases 123
- The non-subject bias of German demonstrative pronouns 145
- Anaphoric properties of German right dislocation 165
- Antecedents of diverse types 183
- Corpus-based and machine learning approaches to anaphora resolution 207
-
Neurolinguistic Studies
- Neuroimaging studies of coherence processes 225
- Reference assignment in the absence of sufficient semantic content 241
- Resolving complex anaphors 259
- Index 279
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Anaphors in text – Introduction vii
-
Anaphors in Cognitive, Text- and Discourse Linguistics
- Indirect anaphora in text 3
- Indirect pronominal anaphora in English and French 21
- Lexical anaphors in Danish and French 37
- Referential collaboration with computers 49
- Reflexivity and temporality in discourse deixis 69
- The function of complex anaphors in texts 81
- Metaphorical anaphors 103
-
The Syntax and Semantic of Anaphors
- Accessibility and definite noun phrases 123
- The non-subject bias of German demonstrative pronouns 145
- Anaphoric properties of German right dislocation 165
- Antecedents of diverse types 183
- Corpus-based and machine learning approaches to anaphora resolution 207
-
Neurolinguistic Studies
- Neuroimaging studies of coherence processes 225
- Reference assignment in the absence of sufficient semantic content 241
- Resolving complex anaphors 259
- Index 279
