THE INTERPRETATION OF ANAPHORIC NOUN PHRASES - TIME-COURSE, AND EFFECTS OF OVERSPECIFICITY

Two experiments investigated the interpretation of anaphoric noun phra ses, and in particular those that could only be linked to their antece dents via knowledge-based inferences. The first experiment showed that much of the inferential processing was carried out as the anaphoric n oun phrase was read, although there was some indication that inferenti al processing continued to the end of the clause. The second experimen t attempted to establish why anaphoric noun phrases that are more spec ific than their antecedents cause problems. It showed that the difficu lty did not lie in adding the extra information carried by the anaphor to the representation of the referent. Rather, we suggest, putting ex tra information in the anaphoric noun phrase disrupts the process of l inking that noun phrase to its antecedent.