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Quantifier Polarity and Referential Focus During Reading

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Quantifier Polarity and Referential Focus During Reading JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE 39, 290±306 (1998) ARTICLE NO. ML982561 Quanti®er Polarity and Referential Focus during Reading Kevin B. Paterson University of Nottingham, United Kingdom and Anthony J. Sanford, Linda M. Moxey and Eugene Dawydiak University of Glasgow, United Kingdom We report the results of two eye-tracking experiments that examine how readers process sentences containing anaphoric pronouns when the referent is provided by a preceding quanti®ed statement. Previous studies (Moxey & Sanford, 1987; Sanford, Moxey, & Paterson, 1996) have shown that positive and negative quanti®ers (e.g., a few and few, respectively) cause subjects to focus on different aspects of the described situation and have direct consequences for the interpre- tation of subsequent anaphoric pronouns. In the present studies, we consider whether positive and negative quanti®ers make different sets available as the referents of subsequent anaphora or if readers must infer the nature of these sets on encountering the anaphor. The results suggest that positives do make sets available as referents, whereas in the case of negatives, readers must infer the referent set. The ®ndings are consistent with linguistic arguments concerning the differences between positive and negative quanti®ers and add to our understanding of complex plural anaphora. q 1998 Academic Press A major task in reading is to determine if expressions refer to the same person or object, expressions that appear in different parts of and much effort has been expended on under- the text refer to the same persons or objects standing the processes that enable a reader in the discourse. Such reference is frequently to identify an expression as an anaphor and signaled by the use of anaphors, such as de®- recover a coreferential antecedent from the nite noun phrases (e.g., the man) and pronouns preceding text. In particular, studies have (e.g., he, she, they), which usually take their shown that the time spent reading a sentence meaning from expressions that appeared ear- containing an anaphor depends in part on the lier in the text. Quite often there is a simple ease with which a reader can identify a co- coreferential relationship between an anaphor referential antecedent (e.g., Haviland & Clark, and its textual antecedent, such that the two 1974; Garrod & Sanford, 1977). Moreover, by monitoring subjects' eye movements during Experiment 1 was carried out while KBP held a Carne- reading, it has been possible to establish which gie Postgraduate Scholoarship at the University of Glas- factors have an immediate or early in¯uence gow. The remainder of the work was supported by a on the antecedent search process (Ehrlich & British Academy Grant to AJS. Thanks are due especially Rayner, 1983; O'Brien, Shank, Myers, & to Martin Pickering and Simon Garrod for helpful com- Rayner, 1988; Duffy & Rayner, 1990; Garrod, ments. We also thank Phil Johnson-Laird and two anony- mous reviewers for comments on an early version of this O'Brien, Morris, & Rayner, 1990; Garrod, paper. The full set of materials and ®ller items used in Freudenthal & Boyle, 1994). Eperiments 1 and 2 are available from Kevin Paterson, However, there are very many cases in E-mail [email protected]. which a pronoun does not bear a simple core- Address reprint requests to Kevin Paterson, Department ferring relation with a textual antecedent, in- of Psychology, University of Derby, Mickelover Campus, Derby DE3 5GX, United Kingdom, or Tony Sanford, cluding those in which either the anaphor or Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Hill- the antecedent expression is within the scope head, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland. of quanti®cation or negation. Examples of such 0749-596X/98 $25.00 290 Copyright q 1998 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. AID JML 2561 / a015$$$$21 07-06-98 15:26:20 jmla AP: JML POLARITY AND FOCUS DURING READING 291 sentences are prevalent in the formal semantics quanti®ers, such as not many X, few X, or less literature (cf. Kamp & Reyle, 1993), yet there than 30% of X, reference to the set of fans is little experimental research on how such sen- who did not go to the match does seem to tences are interpreted. Many of the more com- be possible and even preferable. Thus (29)is plex cases are interesting because they pose acceptable, and (2*) seems to be less obvi- serious problems about which aspects of a dis- ously acceptable than when it appeared as course become the focus of attention as a result (1*). It was argued that such a pattern of focus of using different kinds of linguistic construc- is typical of negative quanti®ers. tion. The present paper is concerned with the (2) Not many of the fans went to the game. claim that quanti®ers (e.g., some, all, a few, (2*) They watched it with enthusiasm. few) can be differentiated in terms of a property (29) They watched it on television. of focus and that this can in¯uence the interpre- tation that is assigned to an anaphoric pronoun The referent of They in (29) is argued by during production or comprehension (Moxey & Moxey and Sanford (1987; Sanford et al., Sanford, 1987; Sanford, Moxey, & Paterson, 1996) to be the Complement set. When sub- 1994, 1996). We report two experiments that jects are invited to write continuations starting examine the resolution of anaphors that have a with the pronoun They in response to positive quanti®ed antecedent. and negative quanti®ed sentences, the results Investigations of the patterns of focus in- show just the kinds of bias described above. duced by various quanti®ers demonstrate dif- Positives almost invariably give rise to contin- ferences between those which are negative uations in which They refers to the Reference and those which are positive (see Moxey & set. With negatives, in a high proportion of Sanford, 1993a, for a discussion of negativ- continuations They is coreferential with the ity). A difference in focus patterns is indicated Complement set. There is, however, some- by the patterns of pronominal reference which thing of an asymmetry, in that the focus ef- seem to be licensed by negative and positive fects for the negatives are weaker. In the San- quanti®ers. In the simple case of a sentence ford et al. (1996) data, for instance, where a quanti®ed with the positive quanti®er some x, total of 10 positive and 10 negative quanti®ers such as Some of the fans went to the game, a were used, the Complement set rate for nega- satisfactory logical representation of the sen- tives was 62%, with 21% Reference set; the tence requires a mental representation of the Reference set rate for positives was 90%, with (necessary) set of fans who did go to the game, only 0.5% Complement set. Thus, the focus (which we shall call the Reference set), the pattern is more diffuse in the case of negatives (possible) set of fans who did not go (which than positives. we shall call the Complement set), and the Although there are these asymmetries in the possibility of things other than fans who might strength of focus effects revealed in continua- have gone (see, e.g., Johnson-Laird, 1983). tions, Sanford et al. (1996) found that focus Consideration of which of these sets might be effects for both negative and positive quanti- referred to by a subsequent pronoun shows ®ers had an equivalent effect on the ease with that the set of fans who went (the Reference which sentences were interpreted during read- Set) is licensed as a referent, as in (1*), while ing when they contained references back to the set who did not go (the Complement Set) Reference set and Complement set. Subjects seems to be ruled out, as in (19): read a series of three-sentence passages in which the second sentence was either quanti- (1) Some of the fans went to the game. ®ed by the positive expressions a few or many (1*) They watched it with enthusiasm. or the negative expressions few or not many (19) They watched it on television. (as shown in Table 1). The third sentence be- Moxey and Sanford (1987; Sanford, Moxey, gan with an anaphoric plural possessive noun & Paterson, 1996) showed that for negative phrase which referred to a property that was AID JML 2561 / a015$$$$22 07-06-98 15:26:20 jmla AP: JML 292 PATERSON ET AL. TABLE 1 ence set comes to be represented. The standard Example Material from Sanford et al. (1996)a argument (Kamp & Reyle, 1993) rests on the unacceptability of (3*) as a continuation of A public meeting (3), which demonstrates that readers do not Local MPs were invited to take part in a public enquiry employ a set-subtraction operation to derive about proposals to build a new nuclear power station. # A few/Few of the MPs attended the meeting. # the Complement set. Readers cannot interpret Their presence/absence# allowed the meeting to run the pronoun They in (3*) as referring to the more smoothly. two marbles that are not in the bag. a Slashes (/) denote alternatives and hashes (#) denote (3) Eight of the ten marbles are in the bag. region divisions used in Experiment 1. (3*) They are under the sofa. It is easy to show that They is typically used to refer to the marbles which are in the bag, either consistent with the Reference set (i.e., as we argued for (1*). However, this demon- their presence) or the Complement set (i.e., stration of a failure of Complement set refer- their absence). ence is restricted to positive quanti®ers. There Readers spent more time on the sentence are two ways in which one might try to explain containing the anaphor when it referred to a away Complement set phenomena: demon- property of the mismatched set.
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