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Individual Differences in Anaphora Resolution: Language and cognitive effects
Edited by Georgia Fotiadou and Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 18] 2023
► pp. 22–47

Anaphora resolution in L1 Greek

A corpus-based study

| Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
| University of Granada
| Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
| Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

By means of an annotated corpus of 13,085 words, this paper investigates discourse-level anaphora in L1 Greek, exploring the anaphoric preferences of referring expressions in subject position and the effect of several factors on antecedent prominence. Longer referential forms are supposed to signal low accessibility, whereas shorter ones tend to be linked to more salient discourse elements. Moreover, antecedent saliency appears to be influenced by syntactic position, sentential/discourse topichood, recency and rhetoric relations between utterances (Right Frontier Constraint). The results of the study indicate that, although the use of null pronominals is the default option in Greek, the ‘second-in-command’ anaphoric expression is the full DP and not the overt pronoun. Furthermore, null pronouns significantly prefer to refer to salient antecedents.

Keywords: anaphora resolution, L1 Greek, annotated corpus, antecedent saliency, antecedent syntactic position, antecedent recency, discourse topic, sentential topic, rhetoric relations, right frontier constraint
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The behavior of anaphoric expressions
    • 1.2Factors that determine antecedent saliency
      • 1.2.1Syntactic position
      • 1.2.2Topicality
      • 1.2.3Recency
      • 1.2.4Hierarchical discourse structure
  • 2.The current study
    • 2.1Aim
    • 2.2Method
      • 2.2.1Participants
      • 2.2.2Procedure
      • 2.2.3Materials
      • 2.2.4Annotation
    • 2.3Research hypotheses
    • 2.4Results
      • 2.4.1Type of the referring expressions
      • 2.4.2Syntactic position
      • 2.4.3Topichood
        • Sentential topic
        • Discourse topic
      • 2.4.4Recency
      • 2.4.5Hierarchical discourse structure
  • 3.Discussion
    • 3.1The distribution of referring expressions
    • 3.2Factors that affect antecedent saliency
    • 3.3Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research
    • 3.4Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.18.01cha
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