Both thematic role and next-mention biases affect pronoun use in Dutch

An important question is whether speakers consider listeners’ expectations when choosing whether to use a pronoun. It has been suggested that certain thematic roles are more expected to be mentioned again, and are therefore more likely to be pronominalized. In the present study, we aim to disentangle predictability effects on pronoun use from thematic-role effects. To this end, we conducted two web-based continuation experiments in Dutch, in which the next-mention biases associated with Source-Goal and Agent-Patient verbs were manipulated to create a shift in the bias. Experiment 1 confirmed that the manipulations changed the biases. Experiment 2 showed that while thematic role mainly influenced demonstrative and full pronoun use for non-subjects, next-mention biases played a role in the choice between reduced and full pronouns and between pronouns and full NPs, irrespective of thematic role or grammatical function. Thus, thematic role and predictability seem to affect pronoun use in different ways.

一个重要的问题是，说话者在选择是否使用代词时是否会考虑听者的预期。有研究表明，某些主题角色（thematic roles）更可能被再次提及，因此更易被代词化。本研究旨在将可预测性对代词使用的影响与主题角色效应分离开来。为此，我们在荷兰语中开展了两项基于网络的续写实验，通过操纵与来源-目标（Source-Goal）及施事-受事（Agent-Patient）动词相关的下一提及偏向（next-mention biases），以实现偏向的转移。实验1证实，上述操纵改变了偏向。实验2表明，尽管主题角色主要影响非主语的指示代词和完整代词使用，但下一提及偏向在简化代词与完整代词的选择、以及代词与完整名词短语（full noun phrases）的选择中发挥作用，且不受主题角色或语法功能的影响。因此，主题角色与可预测性似乎以不同方式影响代词使用。