Event Structure and Discourse Coherence Biases in Pronoun Interpretation
Hannah Rohde, Andrew Kehler, Jeffrey L. Elman · 2008
In a story completion study involving transfer-of-possession passages (John handed a book to Bob. He _____), Stevenson et al. (1994) identified a pronoun interpretation preference that is compatible with two possible explanations: a superficial thematic role bias for Goals over Sources, and a deeper event structure bias toward focusing on the end state of such events. To distinguish these hypotheses, we conducted an experiment manipulating the salience of the end state by comparing the perfective (handed) and imperfective (was handing) forms of the transfer verb. We found that sentences in the imperfective yielded significantly more Source resolutions than those in the perfective, supporting the eventstructure hypothesis. Furthermore, we found that a significant proportion of Goal interpretations arise from continuations which use Occasion (i.e. narration-based) coherence relations. As such, the interpretation preferences are better explained at the level of event structure and discourse coherence, rather than by appeal to superficial heuristics.