Pronoun interpretation in German speech reports
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2024/15/0035/000660Keywords:
pronoun interpretation, speech reports, direct discourse, indirect discourseAbstract
We investigated the interpretation of German personal pronouns using a referent selection task. Participants read contexts introducing three characters followed by pictures depicting an utterance made by one referent. We manipulated the embedding of this utterance in either direct or indirect discourse and the inclusion of either a 1st, 2nd or 3rd person personal pronoun, leading to differences in the necessity to perform perspective shifts for correct interpretation. Referent selection data for pronouns show more errors in direct compared to indirect discourse, suggesting participants avoid perspective shifts. The 1st person pronoun shows a deviating pattern with more errors in indirect compared to direct discourse, in line with proposals highlighting the prominent perspective introduced by 1st person pronouns.
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Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
