The processing of coreference for reduced expressions in discourse integration

Three reading-time experiments in Chinese are reported that rest contrastin g views of how pronominal coreference is achieved. On the one hand, studies of reading lime and eye tracking suggest that reduced expressions, such as the pronoun he, serve as critical links to integrate separate utterances i nto a coherent model of discourse. On the other hand, probe-word recognitio n studies indicate that full anaphoric expressions, such as a repeated name , are more readily interpreted than reduced expressions due to their rich l exical information, which provides effective ales to match the representati on of the appropriate referent in memory. The results indicate that the eas e of integrating the critical referent into a model of discourse is a funct ion of the congruence of lexical, semantic, and discourse features conveyed by a syntactically prominent reduced expression within linguistic input. T his pattern supports the view that a reduced expression is interpreted on-l ine and indeed plays a critical role in promoting discourse coherence by fa cilitating the semantic integration of separate utterances.