PRONOUNS, PASSIVES, AND DISCOURSE COHERENCE

Four experiments examined how pronominalization of entities in differe nt grammatical roles interacts with sentence structure (active vs pass ive) to promote local coherence in discourse. These experiments were c onducted to evaluate and extend the centering theory of local discours e structure. A central postulate of this approach is that every senten ce in a locally coherent discourse realizes a single semantic entity ( the backward-looking center) that provides a link to the preceding utt erance, and that the backward-looking center must be realized as a pro noun for this coherence function to be served. Recent research using s elf-paced reading time has supported this postulate by showing that in certain circumstances sentences in short discourses are read more slo wly when they use repeated names rather than pronouns. The current exp eriments show that this repeated-name penalty does not depend on the t hematic role (semantic function) of an entity in a sentence. Rather, i t occurs for the entity realized by the grammatical subject of a sente nce, independent of thematic role, if that entity was also realized in the preceding sentence. If the entity realized by the grammatical sub ject is new to the discourse, then the repeated-name penalty occurs fo r the direct object of a sentence. This suggests that the backward-loo king center is determined by a hierarchy of grammatical roles. (C) 199 5 Academic Press, Inc.