Paralelismo e foco estrutural no processamento da correferência de pronomes e de nomes repetidos

Abstract

The present study has aims to investigate the intrasentencial coreference processing, observing how the processing of coreference of pronouns and repeated names occurs in relation to the focus of their antecedents. We take as initial hypothesis that repeated names take an extra cost to be processed than pronouns, despite the antecedent is more salient or not. This is nominated by the Repeated Name Penalty, postulated by the Informational Load Hypothesis. Almor (1999, 2000). We performed two online self-paced reading, through Psyscope program. The dependent variable of the two experiments was the reading time of the critical segment (repeated name or pronoun) and the independent variables were the type of resumption (pronoun or repeated name) and the position of the antecedent (focused or unfocused) . The difference between the two experiments was that at the first we controlled all experimental sentences to contain pronouns and repeated names in the same position and syntactic function of its background, so in parallel . The second was controlled in order not to contain the conditions in parallel. 28 students from UFPB participated in each experiment. The results of the first experiment show a lower reading time for the pronouns in relation to repeated names regardless if its antecedent was focused or not .The structural focus showed no significant effect on any of the experimental conditions. A possible explanation would be that the effect of structural parallelism overlapped the effect of focus. That's what the results of the second experiment showed. The resumption and antecedent not in parallel time resulted in an significant effect of structural focus. The reading time was faster when the antecedent was focused than when it was not. It was also confirmed Repeated Name Penalty also in this second experiment.