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Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2021
Edited by Mark Dingemanse, Eva van Lier and Jorrig Vogels
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 38] 2021
► pp. 144–162

Taking the perspective of narrative characters

A mouse-tracking study on the processing of ambiguous referring expressions in narrative discourse

| University of Groningen
| University of Groningen
| University of Groningen
| University of Groningen
An ongoing debate in the interpretation of referring expressions concerns the degree to which listeners make use of perspective information during referential processing. We aim to contribute to this debate by considering perspective shifting in narrative discourse. In a web-based mouse-tracking experiment in Dutch, we investigated whether listeners automatically shift to a narrative character’s perspective when resolving ambiguous referring expressions, and whether different linguistic perspective-shifting devices affect how and when listeners switch to another perspective. We compared perspective-neutral, direct, and free indirect discourse, manipulating which objects are visible to the character. Our results do not show a clear effect of the perspective shifting devices on participants’ eventual choice of referent, but our online mouse-tracking data reveal processing differences that suggest that listeners are indeed sensitive to the conventional markers of perspective shift associated with direct and (to a lesser degree) free indirect discourse.
Keywords: perspective shifting, narrative, free indirect discourse, mouse tracking, reference resolution
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
  • 3.Predictions
  • 4.Materials and methods
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Materials
    • 4.3Procedure
    • 4.4Design and analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Object selection
    • 5.2Reaction times
    • 5.3Mouse trajectories
  • 6.Discussion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Open data
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00054.vog
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