Cover not available

Article In: Language, Interaction and Acquisition: Online-First Articles

Personal and demonstrative pronoun resolution in Chinese learners of L2 German

Evidence from a questionnaire study

ORCiD logo with link | LMU Munich
 | University of Paris 8 | UMR SFL
 | LMU Munich
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This study examines interpretation preferences for different pronominal forms in Mandarin, a topic-drop language, and in German, a language where overt pronominal forms are obligatory in most contexts. We looked at whether speakers of L1 Mandarin–L2 German show command of the division of labor between personal and demonstrative pronouns in German, and whether their preferences relate to general L2 proficiency. Experiment 1 used a questionnaire to establish baseline interpretation preferences for null and overt pronouns in native Mandarin speakers. Experiment 2 used the same method to test the resolution of personal (er) and demonstrative (der) pronouns in German native speakers and in Chinese learners of L2 German. Learners exhibited a subject antecedence preference for both personal and demonstrative pronouns — a pattern that is target-like for personal pronouns but non-target-like for demonstrative pronouns. Surprisingly, there were no significant correlations between either of the two measures of general learner proficiency in German (self-ratings and the LexTALE), and their resolution of demonstrative pronouns. We argue that the subject antecedent preference could be due to L1 influence or a general learner preference. The lack of proficiency effects suggests that pronoun resolution preferences may not develop on a par with other areas of language use during second language acquisition.
Résumé
Cette étude examine les préférences d’interprétation pour différentes formes pronominales en mandarin, une langue qui permet l’omission du sujet (topic-drop), et en allemand, une langue dans laquelle les formes pronominales ouvertes sont obligatoires dans la plupart des contextes. Nous avons cherché à déterminer si les locuteurs natifs du mandarin, apprenants de l’allemand, maîtrisent la division du travail entre les pronoms personnels et démonstratifs en allemand, et si cette maîtrise est liée à leur niveau de compétence dans la L2. L’Expérience 1, basée sur un questionnaire, vise à établir les préférences d’interprétation des pronoms nuls versus ouverts chez les locuteurs natifs du mandarin. L’Expérience 2, utilisant la même méthode, porte sur l’interprétation des pronoms personnels (er) versus démonstratifs (der) en allemand, chez des locuteurs natifs et chez des apprenants sinophones. En règle générale, les apprenants ont montré une préférence pour l’antécédent sujet, tant pour les pronoms personnels que démonstratifs, ce qui correspond à ce que font les natifs pour les pronoms personnels mais pas pour les pronoms démonstratifs. De manière surprenante, aucune corrélation significative n’a été observée entre le niveau de compétence en L2 (mesuré par une tâche LexTALE et des auto-évaluations) et la résolution des pronoms démonstratifs. Nous avançons que la préférence pour l’antécédent sujet peut refléter une influence de la L1 ou une préférence générale propre aux apprenants. L’absence d’effet du niveau de compétence suggère que les préférences d’interprétation des pronoms suivent une trajectoire distincte de celle des autres compétences linguistiques lors de l’acquisition d’une langue seconde.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1L1 pronoun resolution preferences
    • 1.2L2 pronoun resolution preferences
    • 1.3The current study
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • 2.1Method
      • 2.1.1Participants
      • 2.1.2Materials
      • 2.1.3Procedure
    • 2.2Results
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • 3.1Method
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Materials
      • 3.1.3Procedure
    • 3.2Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • Author queries
  • References
References (40)
References
Ahrenholz, B. (2007). Verweise mit Demonstrativa im gesprochenen Deutsch: Grammatik, Zweitspracherwerb und Deutsch als Fremdsprache. W. de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ariel, M. (1990). Accessing noun phrase antecedents. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bader, M., & Portele, Y. (2019). The interpretation of German personal pronouns and d-pronouns. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 38(2), 155–190. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Belletti, A., Bennati, E., & Sorace, A. (2007). Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 25, 657–689. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bryant, D., & Noschka, N. (2015). Personal- und Demonstrativpronomen im Sprachverstehensprozess In H. Klages & G. Pagonis (Eds.), Linguistisch fundierte Sprachförderung und Sprachdidaktik: Grundlagen, Konzepte, Desiderate (pp. 17–46). De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carminati, M. N. (2002). The processing of Italian subject pronouns. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Ellert, M. (2011). Ambiguous pronoun resolution in L1 and L2 German and Dutch. Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Radboud University Nijmegen.
Filiaci, F., Sorace, A., & Carreiras, M. (2013). Anaphoric biases of null and overt subjects in Italian and Spanish: A cross-linguistic comparison. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29, 825–843. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givón, T. (1983). Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. In T. Givón (ed.), Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study (pp. 1–42). John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gundel, J. K., Hedberg, N., & Zacharski, R. (1993). Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language, 69(2), 274–307. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hemforth, B., Konieczny, L., Scheepers, C., Colonna, S., Schimke, S., Baumann, P., & Pynte, J. (2010). Language specific preferences in anaphor resolution: Exposure or gricean maxims?. 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2218–2223. [URL]
Hert, R., Järvikivi, J., & Arnhold, A. (2024). The importance of linguistic factors: He likes subject referents. Cognitive Science, 48(4), e13436. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. J. (1984). On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. Linguistic Theory, 15, 531–573.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jegerski, J., Van Patten, B., & Keating, G. D. (2011). Cross-linguistic variation and the acquisition of pronominal reference in L2 Spanish. Second Language Research, 33, 193–221. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaiser, E., & Trueswell, J. C. (2008). Interpreting pronouns and demonstratives in Finnish: Evidence for a form-specific approach to reference resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 708–748. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kwon, N., & Polinsky, M. (2011). Anaphoric inventories and bound variable interpretation: Evidence from Korean. Poster presented at the 24th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Stanford University, CA.
Leiner, D. J. (2019). SoSci Survey (Version 3.1.06) [Computer software]. [URL]
Lemhöfer, K., & Broersma, M. (2012). Introducing LexTALE: A quick and valid lexical test for advanced learners of English. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 325–343. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leonetti Escandell, V., & Torregrossa, J. (2024). The interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in Spanish compared to Greek and Italian. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 9(1).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, C. N., & Thompson, S. A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. University of California Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, R., Mak, P., & Sanders, T. (2016). The eye-tracking experiment of the third person anaphor in Mandarin texts. Studies of Chinese Language, 1, 83–92.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Papadopoulou, D., Peristeri, E., Plemenou, E., Marinis, T., & Tsimpli, I. (2015). Pronoun ambiguity resolution in Greek: Evidence from monolingual adults and children. Lingua, 155, 98–120. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patterson, C., & Schumacher, P. B. (2021). Interpretation preferences in contexts with three antecedents: examining the role of prominence in German pronouns. Applied Psycholinguistics, 42(6), 1427–1461. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patterson, C., Schumacher, P. B., Nicenboim, B., Hagen, J., & Kehler, A. (2022). A Bayesian approach to German personal and demonstrative pronouns. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 672927. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Portele, Y., & Bader, M. (2016). Accessibility and referential choice: Personal pronouns and d-pronouns in written German. Discours. Revue de Linguistique, Psycholinguistique et Informatique, 18, 1–41.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team. (2024). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. [URL]
Ren, L., Colonna, S., & Schimke, S. (2026). Materials, data and scripts for Personal and demonstrative pronoun resolution in Chinese learners of L2 German: Evidence from a questionnaire study. OSF [URL]
Roberts, L., Gullberg, M., & Indefrey, P. (2008). Online pronoun resolution in L2 discourse: L1 influence and general learner effects. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 333–357. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schimke, S., De la Fuente, I., Hemforth, B., & Colonna, S. (2018). First language influence on second language offline and online ambiguous pronoun resolution. Language Learning, 68(3), 744–779. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schumacher, P. B., Roberts, L., & Järvikivi, J. (2017). Agentivity drives real-time pronoun resolution: Evidence from German er and der. Lingua, 185, 25–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simpson, A., Wu, Z., & Li, Y. (2016). Grammatical roles, coherence relations, and the interpretation of pronouns in Chinese. Lingua Sinica, 2(2), 1–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22, 339–368. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ueno, M., & Kehler, A. (2016). Grammatical and pragmatic factors in Japanese pronoun interpretation. Linguistics, 54(6), 1165–1221. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Voeten, C. C. (2023). Package ‘buildmer’.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, F. (2009). Processing at the syntax-discourse interface in second language acquisition (PhD dissertation). University of Edinburgh.
Yang, C. L., Gordon, P. C., Hendrick, R., & Wu, J. T. (1999). Comprehension of referring expressions in Chinese. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14, 715–743. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ye, A., & Jin, L. (2020). Ordering distributions of main and adverbial clauses in English and Chinese: A contrastive study. Journal of Foreign Languages, 43(4), 53–64.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zhang, A., & Kwon, N. (2022). The interpretational preferences of null and overt pronouns in Chinese. Journal of Linguistics, 58(3), 649–676. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zhu, L. (2023). The third person pronoun and demonstrative resolution in Mandarin Chinese and discourse prominence. Journal of Contemporary Language Research, 2(1), 57–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold-dark jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold-light jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold prag Twitter_Logo_Blue