“Pronouns in Competition,” UC Santa Cruz

Competition among Pronouns in Chamorro Grammar and Sentence Processing1 Matt Wagers*, Sandy Chung*, and Manuel F. Borja° *Department of Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz; °Inetnun Åmut yan Kutturan Natibu, Saipan, CNMI

Introduction

Much work on Binding Theory has implicitly assumed that reflexive anaphors are morphologically distinct from ordinary pronouns, and indeed in most of the world’s languages this seems to be so (Faltz 1977). Research on the comprehension of reflexive anaphors has likewise been concerned with linguistic systems in which reflexives and ordinary pronouns are morphologically distinct. Nonetheless, there are languages in which reflexive anaphors have the same morphological realization as ordinary pronouns throughout the language. Some of these languages:

- Old English (e.g. Faltz 1977, Keenan 2002, Bergeton & Pancheva 2011) - Samoan (Chapin, 1970), Tongan (Otsuka, 2006, fn. 7), a number of other Oceanic languages (Moyse-Faurie, 2008) - Chamorro, an Austronesian language of the Mariana Islands.

Chamorro is a verb-first language in which direct object pronoun forms precede the subject. Reflexive anaphors look like ordinary overt pronouns. Although the language can use special morphology to mark a verb whose direct object is reflexive, this special morphology is optional.

This talk investigates the syntax and processing of pronouns in Chamorro.

On the syntactic side, we show: - Chamorro grammar treats reflexive anaphors differently from ordinary pronouns, despite the fact that they share the same morphological form. - These patterns support a competition-based theory of anaphora most similar to Safir’s (2014). On the processing side, we ask how comprehenders interpret morphological pronoun forms which are ambiguous between reflexive and disjoint readings. - In a picture-matching experiment on tablet computers, participants were first presented with visual and linguistic contexts introducing two characters, and then had to match a target sentence with one of two pictures, one depicting a reflexive event and the other, a disjoint event. - Perhaps the most surprising result: comprehenders prefer to construe overt pronoun forms as reflexive (bound) even when the grammar allows a disjoint construal. - We derive this result from a competition-based theory of anaphora, together with some of the Chamorro-specific facts just described.

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A. Two Versions of Binding Theory

Classical (e.g. Chomsky 1981)

- Anaphors are bound in some local domain (Principle A); ordinary pronouns cannot be bound in some local domain (Principle B)

- Implicitly assumed: reflexive anaphors and ordinary pronouns are morphologically distinct (see e.g. Volkova and Reuland 2014 and, for typological support, Faltz 1977 a.o.)

Competition-based, notably Safir 2014

- Bound variables which are c-commanded by their antecedents are minimal pronouns (= Safir’s D-bound); they originate with just an index feature (cf. Kratzer 2009’s minimal pronouns) and acquire phi-features later in the derivation. - In many languages, a minimal pronoun has a special morphological spell-out when it is in the same phase as its binder (cf. Charnavel and Sportiche 2016 on the relevance of phases). - When this happens, the result is: (x) reflexive anaphors that are morphologically distinct from ordinary pronoun forms and (y) Principle A effects. - Principle B effects arise because ordinary, ‘natural-born’ pronouns, which originate with phi-features, always lose in the competition with a minimal pronoun with the same construal (see Reinhart 1983, Wilson 2001, Kiparsky 2002, Safir 2004, among others, for other competition-based approaches to Binding Theory). - A key feature of this system: the morphological difference between reflexive anaphors and other pronoun forms arises only at spell-out.

B. A Window of Opportunity

Safir 2014’s approach explicitly allows for languages whose reflexive anaphors are not morphologically distinct from ordinary pronoun forms—languages in which the minimal pronoun has the same morphological spell-out as a natural-born pronoun, even when its antecedent is within the same phase (see Kiparsky 2002 for an OT approach with a similar window of opportunity; as well as Levinson 2000 and Kiparsky 2002 on other languages of this type). - Chamorro is a language of this type.

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C. The Forms of Chamorro Pronouns

- Chamorro has three sets of pronoun forms: weak, independent, and null. - The choice between these sets of forms is determined by animacy and syntactic context.

(1) Weak Independent 1 sg. yu’ guåhu 2 sg. hao hågu 3 sg. gui’ guiya 1 incl.pl. hit(a) hita 1 excl.pl. ham(i) hami 2 pl. hamyu hamyu 3 pl. siha siha

- A pronoun must be null when it is (a) inanimate or (b) cross-referenced by agreement in person. - Possessors and subjects of transitive verbs are always cross-referenced by agreement in person, so pronouns in these positions are always null. - Otherwise, animate pronouns can either be null or realized as weak pronouns when they are direct objects or intransitive subjects; animate pronouns in any other position are realized as independent pronouns.

(2) a. Kao la’mun hao nu guiya? Q AGR.responsible you OBL him/her ‘Are you responsible for him/her/*it?’

b. Kao un arerekla (gui’) esta? Q AGR fix.PROG him/her already ‘Have you already fixed him/her/*it up?’

c. Ti måttu yu’ gi gipot-mu sa’ un na’bubu yu’. not AGR.come I LOC party-AGR because AGR make.angry me ‘I did not come to your party because you made me angry.’ (CD, entry for na’bubu)

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D. Chamorro Strategies for Realizing ‘Reflexives’

- Let’s use the term ‘reflexive’ for Chamorro pronouns that are bound by a c-commanding subject in the same phase. - A reflexive direct object is realized simply as an ordinary (weak) pronoun.

(3) a. Put ennao na hu sakrifisia yu’. because that COMP AGR sacrifice me ‘For that reason, I sacrifice myself.’ (CD, entry for put ennao)

b. Ha gosa gui’ gi giput. AGR enjoy him LOC party ‘He enjoyed himself at the party.’ (CD, entry for gosa)

c. Mayulang i pesadót anai ha talang gui’ si Pedro. AGR.PASS.break the scale when AGR weigh him UNM Pedro ‘The scale broke when Pedro weighed himself.’ (CD, entry for pesadót)

Juan Malimanga Clothilde Gould/Roger G. Faustino, 1982, Pacific Daily News

Juan, siña chumefla hao ya un papaini hao? Juan, can AGR.whistle you and AGR comb.PROG you “Juan, can you whistle and comb yourself [at the same time]?”

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- Verbs with a reflexive direct object can optionally be modified by the adverb maisa, which forms a prosodic word with the verb (bracketed below).

(4) a. Ha [ tokcha’ maisa ] gui’ ni pakin tokcha’. AGR spear self him OBL gun.L spear ‘He poked himself with the spear gun.’ (CD, entry for pakin tokcha’)

b. Ha [ ritiran maisa ] gui’ si Joanne gi espitåt. AGR dismiss.L self her UNM Joanne LOC hospital ‘Joanne dismissed herself from the hospital.’ (CD, entry for ritira)

c. Hu [ atan mamaisa ] yu’. AGR watch self.PROG I ‘I’m looking at myself.’

- In other contexts, maisa means ‘(by) oneself’ (and is prosodically independent).

(5) Diahlu ya hågu ha’ un hånao na maisa. no.thanks and you EMP AGR go L self ‘No, just go by yourself.’ (CD, entry for diahlu)

- A reflexive that is some other argument of the verb is realized simply as an ordinary (independent) pronoun.

(6) a. Manápatti ni i salåppi’ intri siha. AGR.divide OBL the money among them ‘They divided the money amongst themselves.’ (CD, entry for ápatti)

b. Si Jose ha na’takkilu’ i aliña giya guiya. UNM Jose AGR make.high the pride LOC him ‘Jose takes pride in himself.’ (CD, entry for aliña)

- A reflexive possessor is realized as an ordinary (null) possessor pronoun.

(7) Ha po’lu gi buti-ña pro. AGR put LOC boat-AGR ‘Hei put it in hisi boat.’ (from a tape-recorded narrative)

- Generalizing: Every reflexive has the same morphological realization as an ordinary pronoun. Somewhat awkward for classical Binding Theory—though not for Safir 2014 or Kiparsky 2002.

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E. Q & A

- Q: Could it be that Chamorro simply “doesn’t have binding”, meaning that all pronouns— including those in (3) and (6), simply pick up their reference from discourse or the nonlinguistic context, so that the appearance of coindexing in (3) and (6) is accidental?

- A: No. Chamorro does have binding. See below.

F. Evidence that Chamorro Treats Reflexives Specially

- Despite the fact that every reflexive has the same morphological realization as an ordinary pronoun, other aspects of Chamorro grammar do treat them specially (Chung 1989).

Pronoun forms again

- A reflexive that is a complement of the verb cannot be null; it must be realized as an overt pronoun form.

(8) a. Hu arerekla yu’ / *pro esta. AGR fix.PROG I already ‘I already fixed myself up.’ b. Ha arekla gui’ / *pro para i misa. AGR fix her for the mass (‘She fixed herself up for mass.’)

- Therefore, a reflexive that is an inanimate direct object must be realized as a weak pronoun, even though otherwise, inanimate pronouns are null.

(9) a. I tiempun uchan ha tutuhun gui’ gi Agostu na mes. the time.L rain AGR begin it LOC August L month ‘The rainy season begins on the month of August.’ (CD, entry for tiempun uchan)

b. Ha kandålun maisa gui’ i petta. AGR lock.L self it the door ‘The door locked itself.’

c. Ha baba gui’ i petta dispues di hu huchum (#gui’). AGR open it the door after AGR close it ‘The door opened (itself) after I closed it.’

Person-animacy hierarchy

- Chamorro systematically disallows transitive clauses with certain combinations of subject and direct object. For instance, no transitive clause whose direct object is an animate pronoun can have a non-pronoun as its subject. We refer to this constraint as the PAH (Clothier-Goldschmidt 2015).

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(10)a. *Para u lalåtdi gui’ si Maria. FUT AGR scold him/her UNM Maria (‘Maria is going to scold him/her.’)

b. *Kao ha chiku siha i palåo’an? Q AGR kiss them the woman (‘Did the woman kiss them?’)

(11)a. *Ha tattiyi si Juan guatu gi kareta. AGR follow UNM Juan to.there LOC car (‘Juan followed him/her to the car.’)

b. Ha yulang si Miguel. AGR break UNM Miguel ‘Miguel broke it.’

- Transitive clauses with a reflexive direct object systematically evade the PAH; see (3c), (4b), (9b-c), and the following.

(12)a. Ha bågai gui’ i neni ni sabanas. AGR clothe him the baby OBL blanket ‘The baby wrapped himself with the blanket.’ (CD, entry for bågai)

b. Ha gosa gui’ si Jesus ni mångga ya nina’masisinik. AGR enjoy him UNM Jesus OBL mango and AGR.PASS.make.have.diarrh.PROG ‘Jesus overindulged himself with the mangos and he’s having diarrhea.’ (CD, entry for gosa)

c. Ma tåmpi siha si Bedu yan si Chai’ ni payu. AGR cover them UNM Bedu and UNM Chai’ OBL umbrella ‘Bedu and Chai’ covered themselves with the umbrella.’

Bound variable pronouns with quantified antecedents

- Unsurprisingly, Chamorro pronouns can be interpreted as variables bound by quantifiers, whether they are reflexive (13) or bound by a c-commanding DP in a higher clause (14).

(13)a. Kada påtgun ha pula’ gui’ gi kuatton-ña. each child AGR undress him LOC room-AGR ‘Each childi undressed himselfi in hisi room.’

b. Ni håyiyi na tåotao ma’å’ñao nu guiya. not anyone L person AGR.afraid OBL him ‘Nobodyi is afraid of himselfi.’

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(14)a. Kada saina gai opbligasion ni para u atendi i each parent AGR.have obligation COMP FUT AGR attend the famagu’on-ña. children-AGR ‘Each parenti has an obligation to (= that hei should) attend to hisi children.’ (CD, entry for opbligasión)

b. Kada låhi maguf sa’ in na’i (gui’) salåppi’. each man AGR.happy because AGR give him money ‘Each boyi was happy because we gave himi money.’

c. In faisin kada påtgun taimanu bai in kastiga (gui’). AGR ask each child how? AGR punish him ‘We asked each boyi how we should punish himi.’

- When the binder is in a higher clause, the bound variable pronoun has exactly the same realizations as a ‘natural-born’ pronoun: it must be null when inanimate or cross-referenced by agreement in person (e.g. the transitive subject and the possessor in (14a)), but otherwise can be null or overt. In (14b-c), for instance, the bound variable pronoun is a direct object, so it can be null or realized as a weak pronoun. - This is further evidence that the special spell-out of reflexives seen in (8-9) is limited to contexts in which the reflexive and its binder are in the same phase.

G. Chamorro Reflexives in a Competition-Based Binding Theory The patterning of Chamorro reflexives can be accounted for straightforwardly in Safir’s (2014) competition-based theory of anaphora. The account relies on key features of the theory (italicized below), and in this sense provides support for it. - Suppose we make the standard assumption that (natural-born) pronouns have phi- features. Then the fact that the PAH excludes certain clauses with pronoun direct objects, but not reflexive direct objects, suggests that Chamorro reflexives are minimal pronouns: they have an index feature, but no phi-features, when the PAH takes effect. - The PAH takes effect post-syntactically, at spell-out (Chung 2014). This suggests that it is only at spell-out (after the PAH) that minimal pronouns acquire phi-features and all pronouns—minimal or natural-born—are realized morphologically. - The details of spell-out must be arranged so that minimal pronouns are (a) always overt when they are direct objects whose binder lies in the same phase, (b) but otherwise have the same spell-out options as natural-born pronouns. There are various ways of stipulating this. - In the competition between a minimal pronoun and a natural-born pronoun with the same construal, the natural-born pronoun always loses. In Chamorro, this can be seen from the contrast between the (null) natural-born pronouns and the (overt) minimal pronouns in (8).

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H. Incremental Interpretation of Reflexives

- Given that minimal pronouns in Chamorro have the morphological realization of ordinary natural-born pronouns, how do comprehenders navigate the task of construal?

- Consider the following sentence fragment:

(15) Ha patmåda gui’ … AGR slap her/him

- In principle, this gui’ could be a minimal pronoun, and receive a reflexive interpretation from an upcoming co-argument; but it could also be a natural-born pronoun and be interpreted as disjoint from an upcoming co-argument.

- Interesting wrinkle: Because Chamorro is verb-first and direct object pronouns are second-position clitics which appear right after the verb (or even farther to the left), no DP arguments that are clausemates of gui’ are yet known1.

Some claims to guide our thinking here:

- The Binding is Easy overgeneralization: Binding is preferred to discourse-mediated coreference relations with the same construal (e.g. Reinhart 1983, Reuland 2011). This may predict a preference for reflexive interpretations, particularly if it applies to predictively- extended representations.

1 Cf. Van Gompel & Liversedge (2003) & Kazanina et al. (2006). Masaya Yoshida, p.c.: Van Gompel & Liversedge, in an unpublished manuscript, observe that even when pronouns can be resolved anaphorically across clauses, a clause-initial pronoun nonetheless engages a forward-search for cataphoric resolution.

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- However, sentence processing studies that have directly tested this preference for bound pronouns have shown that it is not inviolable, but rather competes with other preferences like linear proximity (Cunnings, Patterson & Felser 2014).

- Disjoint Reference Presumption (DRP): “the arguments of a predicate are intended to be disjoint, unless marked otherwise” (Farmer & Harnish 1987: 557).

- Levinson (2000) suggests that DRP could be grounded in his I-Heuristic, a default interpretation based on “mutual beliefs about regularities in the world”–

“agents normally act upon entities other than themselves; the prototypical action— what is described by the prototypical transitive clause—is one agent acting upon some entity distinct from itself.” (Levinson, 2000: 328)

- Informativity: In Chamorro, a reflexive interpretation is less likely to require revision, because it is compatible with more continuations. Since reflexives are invisible to the PAH, a reflexive interpretation of gui’ allows the subject to be either a (null) pronoun or an overt DP, but a disjoint interpretation requires the subject to be a (null) pronoun. - [TP … gui’i/*j DPi … ] - [TP … gui’ i/j proi … ] - The actual predictions of this view depend on p(DP)/p(pro), p(gui’|Disjoint), etc. assuming comprehenders are finely-tuned to upcoming structure (e.g. Hale 2006).

- Both Binding is Easy and Informativity predict that the Chamorro pronoun gui’ should initially be interpreted as reflexive (bound). The DRP predicts that it will initially be interpreted as disjoint. - To test how speakers interpret gui’ in contexts like (15), we conducted a picture selection task on tablet computers. We analyzed what kind of pictures were selected and also the dynamics of participants’ swiping, registered by the touchscreen.

I. Experimental Design - Picture selection. Critical stimulus type:

(16) Chonnik i puti’un guatu gi atyu na litråtu // push the star there at that picture

anai ha patmåmada gui’ ni panak lålu’ si Felipe. where AGR is.slapping him with fly.swatter Felipe

‘Push the star to that picture // where Felipe is slapping himself with a fly-swatter.’ ^ carrier instruction ^ ^ target sentence ^

- In our design, we modified the embedded target sentence – in bold in (16) – by varying (a) the pronoun that immediately followed the verb and (b) the presence of an overt DP that could be a subject or direct object.

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Pronoun Type. This factor varied whether the verb was immediately followed by:

- GUI: An overt pronoun: … ha patmåmada gui’ ni … - MAISA: The reflexive adverb plus a pronoun: … ha patmådan mamaisa gui’ ni … - NULL: No overt pronoun or adverb: … ha patmåmada ni …

Potential Binder. This factor varied whether there was an overt DP at the end of the sentence that could potentially bind the pronoun. - Overt potential binder: … ha patmåmada gui’ ni panak lålu’ si Felipe. - No overt potential binder: … ha patmåmada gui’ ni panak lålu’.

- A sample trial is illustrated on p. 12

Chonnik i puti’un guatu gi atyu na litråtu anai ha … OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER NO OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER GUI’ ha patmåmada gui’ ni panak lålu’ si Felipe ha patmåmada gui’ ni panak lålu’ MAISA ha patmådan mamaisa gui’ ni panak lålu’ ha patmådan mamaisa gui’ ni panak si Felipe lålu’ NULL ha patmåmada ni panak lålu’ si Felipe

+ Non-reflexive baseline2 ha patmåmada ni panak lålu’ i fasun Felipe. AGR is.slapping with fly.swatter the face.of Felipe ‘… she is slapping Felipe’s face with a flyswatter’

- Every trial began with a context screen which introduced two characters and was accompanied by context-setting sentences. These sentences served to license pro and to make the bound and disjoint interpretations of the target sentence equally plausible. For example: Umasagua si Felipe yan si Chai’. Umatgumementu i dos ni atdit ya mampus lalålu’ i dos.

‘Felipe and Chai are married. The two of them are having a strenuous argument and they’re very angry.’ - 96 Chamorro speakers participated in the experiment in the CNMI in September 2016: they were from Saipan (39), Rota (49), Guam (5) and Tinian (3). The analysis presented below excludes data from 6 participants whose median RT exceeded 2 S.D. from the mean. - Samsung Nexus 10 tablets, using OpenSesame (Mathôt, Schreij and Theeuwes, 2012), and its Android run-time extension. The entire experiment was delivered auditorily in Chamorro.

2 When the pronoun was null and there was no overt potential binder, the result was a sentence which Borja (our Chamorro co-author) perceived as pragmatically odd; this sentence was always given a disjoint interpretation, e.g. ‘she slapped him’. We therefore modified this condition to include a sentence-final DP which could only be construed as a theme (direct object) in the given scenario: we call this the non-reflexive baseline.

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Ⓐ Context Screen

Umasagua si Felipe yan si Chai’. Umatgumementu i dos ni atdit ya mampus lalålu’ i dos. Felipe and Chai’ are married. The two are arguing sharply and they’re very angry. Ⓑ Target Screen

Selection box

Response puck 3.41344189 4.64298865

Chonnik i puti’un guatu gi atyu na

litråtu anai ha patmåmada Chonnikgui’ i kurason ni guatu panak gi atyu na litråtu anai lålu’. ha litråratu gui’ 0 4.97 Push the star over to that picture whereTime (s)shei/hej is slapping himj with a ?ly-swatter. 3.41344189 4.64298865

Ⓒ Participant touches Response Puck and swipes it to the Selection Box. Response Touch RT: when Puck is ?irst Chonnik i kurason guatu gi atyu na litråtu anai ha litråratu gui’ touched, from audio offset. 0 4.97 Time (s)

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J. Results

Table 1 Percentage of reflexive-picture choices

OVERT POTENTIAL NO OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER BINDER GUI’ 88% 79% MAISA 99% 96% NULL 13% + Non-reflexive baseline: 7% (N~260; std. err ~2%)

Simple logistic regression on just the {gui’, maisa} subset:

Coefficients: Estimate S.E. z p(>|z|) (Intercept) 1.33 0.16 9.0 ~0 *** PronounType 1.86 0.34 5.5 ~0 *** A OvertPotBinder 0.61 0.23 2.6 <.001 ** B ProType:OvPotBinder 1.82 1.07 1.7 <.10 .

Picture Choice Findings: A: More reflexive interpretations with maisa compared to gui’ B: More reflexive interpretations with an overt potential binder

- When the reflexive interpretation of gui’ is obligatory, participants still made errors: - They didn’t select reflexive pictures at the same rate as when maisa is present (Finding A). - Moreover, the contrast between environments in which the reflexive interpretation is obligatory (= OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER) vs. optional (= NO OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER) was neither huge nor restricted to gui’ alone (Finding B).

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Table 1 Touch RT: When Participants Initiate Their Response on the Tablet Mean RT w.r.t Audio Offset. Bold text indicates grammatical responses.

OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER Pronoun Type Reflexive Response Disjoint Response GUI’ 1536 ms ± 76 ms (n=195) 1707 ms ± 23 ms (n=23) MAISA 762 ms ± 73 ms (n=235) --- (n=1) Null 2177 ms ± 220 ms (n=24) 1604 ms ± 92 ms (n=182)

NO OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER Reflexive Response Disjoint Response GUI’ 1869 ms ± 98 ms (n=145) 2023 ms ± 185 ms (n=40) MAISA 1450 ms ± 79 ms (n=214) --- (n=5) Non-reflexive Baseline 2592 ms ± 486 ms (n=11) 1552 ms ± 83 ms (n=198)

Touch RT Findings C: Reflexive responses are always given most quickly with maisa. D: Reflexive responses to gui’ are comparable to disjoint responses to null when the PAH is in force (= OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER). E: When gui’ can be disjoint (= NO OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER), both reflexive and disjoint responses to gui’ have comparable initiation times. F: Overall cost when there’s no overt potential binder (subject = null pro)

- When maisa is used, comprehenders are more likely to select a bound interpretation, and also much faster at doing so (Findings C, D). One hypothesis: maisa allows a predictive enrichment of the linguistic representation to include a minimal pronoun. - When a reflexive and disjoint interpretation are both available, the disjoint response does not appear to be given any later (Finding E). - If the subject is null pro (= NO OVERT POTENTIAL BINDER), participants took longer to initiate their responses, most dramatically for sentences that also contained maisa (Finding F)3.

- Finger-swipe trajectory analysis.

Finger-swipe responses recorded by a tablet potentially provide data comparable to mouse- tracking, although finger-swipe movements are much more ballistic compared to mouse- tracking movements (Freeman and Ambady 2010). Participants using the tablet mostly seem to prepare their responses before execution. Nonetheless, we do find some evidence of competition effects in gui’ sentences compared to maisa sentences.

3 This doesn’t look too surprising, since one could ascribe a cost to fixing the reference of a null subject in a discourse-poor environment. However, one might have plausibly expected the presence of maisa to allow comprehenders to begin restricting their responses to reflexive-compatible pictures; but this did not happen.

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Figure 1 Finger-swipe trajectories to Reflexive responses only (top-left corner) Each hexagon shaded to indicate # of visitations to that area in

Finger-swipe Trajectory Findings Participants sometimes (start to) visit competitor pictures – here, Disjoint (top-right) G: They do so more often for gui’ (top row) compared to maisa (bottom row). H: Among gui’ responses, they are more likely to visit the competitor picture when there is no overt potential binder (right column). Recall that, in this condition, the PAH allows both reflexive and disjoint interpretations.

- A comparable pattern is found in average path length from start position to response picture

Figure 2 Path Length Traveled (pixels)

The longest path traversed in response selection is found for disjoint responses to gui’ sentences when there is no potential binder (circled data point).

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K. Conclusions

- Chamorro comprehenders prefer to interpret pronouns as reflexive (= with a c- commanding binder within the same phase) when they can. The reflexive interpretation is preferred even when it’s not obligatory and even though there’s a competing form – with maisa – that is unambiguously reflexive. - Many previous studies show that comprehenders are not tempted to consider a feature- matching but grammatically illicit binder for a reflexive pronoun (Dillon et al. 2013). Our result complements this finding: in Chamorro, comprehenders prefer to construe a pronoun as reflexive (and therefore bound by a following DP) rather than anteceded by a preceding DP in discourse.

- What we’d like to say: comprehenders adopt a reflexive (=locally bound) interpretation of pronouns virtually by default. When it is permitted by the grammar, they sometimes revise this interpretation. -How could we ground this hypothesis? Suppose, in our sentences, it is faster to compute the reflexive representation compared to any disjoint representation (cf. Koornneef & Reuland, 2016).

- In a cue-based retrieval (CBR) framework (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005, Dillon et al., 2013), the pronoun should trigger a memory retrieval for antecedents at some level(s) of representation. In principle this could activate discourse referents; or the prior linguistic material that established such referents.

Version 1. No amendments to CBR. The most accessible constituent in memory just is the subject constituent, because it is (predictively) projected after the verb/agreement is processed. Though its linearized material remains unencountered, it is temporally, or mnemonically, most recent.

Version 2. Binding is special. The retrospective re-activation of discourse antecedents is relatively slow or unreliable compared to a (prospective?) process seeking to identify possible binders (or focus-of-attention antecedents; cf. Rigalleau, Caplan & Baudiffier, 2004; King, Andrews & Wagers, 2012). An observation perhaps related: in studies of English reflexive processing, non-binders are only rarely or sporadically activated. They can intrude, but when they do it usually seems to be later (e.g., Andrews, et al., 2016).

In either case, there is a competition either between reactivated constituents in memory (Version 1) or qualitatively different processes (Version 2). But the odds are tilted in favor of the bound reading, either contingently (Version 1) or by design (Version 2).

- Because Chamorro has no morphologically reflexive pronouns, it is a good test case for identifying the contribution of bottom-up and top-down information in the identification of antecedents.

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REFERENCES

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1 This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS- 1251429 to the University of California, Santa Cruz. We thank the members of the Chamorro communities in the CNMI for their continued support. For this study, special thanks to the following people and organizations: on Saipan—Representative Joseph Lee Pan T. Guerrero, Sen. Justo S. Quitugua and Len Sablan, Joeten-Kiyu Library and the late Roy D. Rechebei, San Vincente Elementary School and Paulette T. Sablan (principal), Kagman Elementary School and Dr. Ignacia T. Demapan (principal), Cindy P. Reyes (Director, Chamorro/Carolinian Language Policy Commission); and on Rota—the Mayor’s Office and Mayor Efraim M. Atalig, Tita A. Hocog, Sinapalo School and Marvin Tamangided (Vice Principal), the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, Magdalena S.N. Mesngon and Julita A. Calvo. Dångkulu na si Yu’us ma’åsi’!

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