The role of subordinating conjunctions in the interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in native Peninsular Spanish

Subject pronoun interpretation in native Spanish has generally been approached under the Position of Antecedent Strategy, a parsing strategy which claims that null pronouns bias toward subject antecedents and overt pronouns toward object antecedents. While some studies align with the predicted patte...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inApplied psycholinguistics Vol. 46
Main Authors Martín-Villena, Fernando, Sorace, Antonella, Lozano, Cristóbal
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 21.03.2025
Subjects
Antecedents
Bias
Causality
Conjunctions
Language Dominance
Original Article
Parsing
Preferences
Pronouns
Romance Languages
Semantics
Sentence Structure
Spanish language
Syntax
subject pronouns
subordinating conjunctions
overt
null
Peninsular Spanish
interpretation
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Summary:Subject pronoun interpretation in native Spanish has generally been approached under the Position of Antecedent Strategy, a parsing strategy which claims that null pronouns bias toward subject antecedents and overt pronouns toward object antecedents. While some studies align with the predicted patterns, others present mixed evidence. To further clarify this, our study tests the offline interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in 55 native Peninsular Spanish speakers. We additionally tested the role played by different temporal subordinating conjunctions (mientras “while” vs. cuando “when”) in modulating subject pronoun interpretation preferences. Our findings reveal that overt pronouns bias toward object antecedents independently from the subordinating conjunction. Conversely, null pronouns bias toward subject antecedents, but their interpretation is influenced by the type of subordinating conjunction, with higher rates of subject interpretations in the mientras “while” condition. These results lend support to theoretical accounts such as the Form-Specific Multiple-Constraints approach, which asserts that referring expressions are subject to different constraints and to varying degrees. These findings thus extend beyond purely structural accounts and underscore the complexity of subject pronoun interpretation in Spanish.
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ISSN:0142-7164
1469-1817
DOI:10.1017/S014271642400047X