Correlatos prosódicos de la desambiguación pronominal en español

One of the major challenges in pronominal anaphora resolution occurs when the anaphor is ambiguous. This paper explores the interplay between prosodic features and pronominal anaphora in ambiguous discourse in Spanish. The results for duration, fundamental frequency and amplitude of the segment in the speech signal corresponding to the pronoun, complemented by data on pause occurrence and pause duration, suggest the potential role of prosody in anaphora resolution.La ambigüedad del antecedente es uno de los mayores retos que se plantean en la resolución de la anáfora pronominal. Este trabajo explora la interrelación entre los rasgos prosódicos y la anáfora pronominal ambigua en el discurso en español. Los resultados obtenidos en lo que respecta a la duración, la frecuencia fundamental y la amplitud del segmento de la señal sonora que contiene el pronombre anafórico, junto con los datos sobre la presencia de pausa y la duración de la misma, sugieren que los rasgos prosódicos podrían jugar un papel en la resolución de la anáfora

Prosody and the Resolution of Pronominal Anaphora

In this paper, we investigate the acoustic prosodic marking of demonstrative and personal pronouns in taskoriented dialog. Although it has been hypothesized that acoustic marking affects pronoun resolution, we find that the prosodic information extracted from the data is not sufficient to predict antecedent type reliably. Interspeaker variation accounts for much of the prosodic variation that we find in our data. We conclude that prosodic cues should be handled with care in robust, speakerindependent dialog systems. 1 Introduction Previous work on anaphora resolution has yielded a rich basis of theories and heuristics for finding antecedents. However, most research to date has neglected an important potential cue that is only available in spoken data: prosody. Prosodic marking can be used to change the antecedent of a pronoun, as demonstrated by this classic example from Lakoff (1971) (capitals indicate a pitch accent): (1) John i called Jim j a Republican, then he i insulted him j ..

On L1 Attrition and Prosody in Pronominal Anaphora Resolution

This thesis is a collection of four studies on pronominal anaphora resolution with a focus on first language (L1) attrition and prosody. In Study I, we explored the temporariness of attrition effects on anaphora resolution in L1 Italian speakers who moved to Sweden after puberty (i.e., late bilinguals). An experimental group of 20 late Italian-Swedish bilinguals and a control group of 21 Italian monolinguals completed a self-paced interpretation task twice, and we measured response preferences and response times. In Study II, we investigated how L1 Italian and L1 Swedish speakers use pause features and prominence cues to resolve globally ambiguous anaphora sentences, and whether their patterns in the use of prosody mirror the divergent coreference patterns in the two languages. 28 L1 Italian speakers and 28 L1 Swedish speakers completed a speech production task, in which we analyzed the inter-clausal pause length and the pronoun’s degree of prosodic prominence, and a control interpretation task, in which we considered response preferences. Study III represents a continuation of Study II, since we examined a group of 18 late Italian-Swedish bilinguals, who completed the same experimental tasks of Study II. Study IV is a theoretical investigation, in which we discussed previous inconsistent findings on anaphora resolution in light of the interplay between hierarchical structure and linear order of a sentence. The results of the four studies suggest, first, that anaphora resolution may also affect null pronouns, and that task-learning effects should be taken into account for further research on L1 re-immersion. Second, they suggest that inter-clausal pause and prosodic prominence of pronouns are likely to break the canonical coreference pattern, both in a null subject language and in a non-null subject language. Third, the findings also reveal that L1 attrition affects prominence patterns and pause features in pronoun resolution. In particular, the longer the residence in the foreign language (FL) environment, the higher the probability that late bilinguals adapt to the FL patterns when they use prosody to resolve anaphora sentences. Fourth, both monolinguals and bilinguals are sensitive to the interplay between hierarchical structure and linear order of anaphora. However, they employ different strategies to interpret an anaphora sentence, in which hierarchical structure and linear order favor different antecedents. The implications of the findings are discussed in light of the role of processing and cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in L1 attrition, as well as in light of the use of prosodic cues to resolve an anaphoric reference, both in relation to the Null Subject Parameter and in relation to L1 attrition

La interfaz entre prosodia y discurso en la resolución de la anáfora pronominal en español

El estudio de la interfaz entre la prosodia y el discurso oral en español se ha centrado en aspectos como la caracterización prosódica de los marcadores discursivos, el análisis de las funciones de la entonación en la conversación coloquial o la descripción de los correlatos prosódicos de la cortesía y de la ironía, por mencionar únicamente algunos de los temas que han merecido más atención entre los investigadores. Sin embargo, el papel de la información prosódica en la resolución de la anáfora pronominal en el discurso oral en español no parece que se haya abordado todavía en profundidad, pese a que los problemas relacionados con la interpretación de los elementos anafóricos ocupan un lugar prominente en el ámbito de la investigación sobre el discurso, tanto desde la perspectiva de la teoría lingüística como desde el punto de vista de la lingüística computacional (Rello 2010: 5-19). Por otra parte, para el desarrollo de los sistemas de diálogo ―una de las principales aplicaciones de las tecnologías del habla en la actualidad- es fundamental realizar un trata-miento adecuado de la anáfora, combinando los métodos propios del procesamiento del lenguaje natural con la extracción, mediante técnicas de reconocimiento automático del habla, de los parámetros acústicos relacionados con la prosodia

Discourse structure and information structure : interfaces and prosodic realization

In this paper we review the current state of research on the issue of discourse structure (DS) / information structure (IS) interface. This field has received a lot of attention from discourse semanticists and pragmatists, and has made substantial progress in recent years. In this paper we summarize the relevant studies. In addition, we look at the issue of DS/ISinteraction at a different level—that of phonetics. It is known that both information structure and discourse structure can be realized prosodically, but the issue of phonetic interaction between the prosodic devices they employ has hardly ever been discussed in this context. We think that a proper consideration of this aspect of DS/IS-interaction would enrich our understanding of the phenomenon, and hence we formulate some related research-programmatic positions

Norwegian Object Shift as IP-internal topicalization

In this paper we discuss the phenomenon of Object Shift in Norwegian, and we show that this operation is more complex and discourse related than what has traditionally been assumed. We argue that Object Shift cannot be accounted for in a purely prosodic approach. Rather, we demonstrate that a common denominator for all objects undergoing Object Shift is that they are topics. We thus propose that Object Shift should be analysed as (IP-internal) topicalization. Furthermore, we discuss in detail the peculiar behaviour of the topical pronominal object det ‘it’ in cases where its referent is not an individuated, gender-agreeing noun, but rather a non-individuated referent, like a full clause, a VP or a type DP. In such cases, this pronoun typically refrains from Object Shift. We discuss the contrast between these types of objects and shifting objects in light of the topic hierarchy presented in Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl (2007) and show that pronominal objects that undergo Object Shift have the characteristics of familiar topics, while det ‘it’ in the nonshifting contexts have the characteristics of aboutness topics. Consequently, we propose that Object Shift only applies to pronominal objects that constitute familiar topics

Topic and focus in Ngardi

This paper examines the discourse pragmatics of the non- configurational (free word order) Australian language Ngardi. Ngardi is a Ngumbin language spoken by a small number of people east of the Kimberleys. I examine Topic and Focus in equational sentences and question forms gathered from transcripts of card games played by Ngardi speakers. I examine this data from the Information Structure perspective as defined by Lambrecht (1994) and include some discussion of Choi's (2001) NEW and PROM binary features. I conclude that a range of constituents to the left of the obligatory pronominal clitics are conditioned by discourse pragmatic factors.The field data for this thesis was collected by Lee Cataldi, funded by ARC Grant No. A10009036, Chief Investigators Christopher Manning and Jane Simpson

Discourse deixis and null anaphora in German

The main aim of this thesis is to provide insight into the interaction of the syntactic and pragmatic properties of German, particularly with respect to the issue of configurationality. This language is particularly difficult to classify as it displays both subject-object asymmetries (a feature of "configurational" languages), but also has a topic position (a feature of "discourse-configurational" languages). In order to avoid the difficulties associated with subtle acceptability judgements from informants, the study presented here is based on a frequency analysis of word order variation in spoken language corpora. In the first part, I concentrate on the initial position in German main clauses, which is traditionally referred to as the topic position, and using a task-oriented corpus provide the statistics for the following: ffl The frequency of the different grammatical functions in initial position, in order to determine the relative frequency of the canonical SVO word order. ffl ..