Testing the neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora: The influence of consistency constraints on interpretations of coreference in Spanish

• Published in: Journal of pragmatics Vol. 33; no. 6; pp. 901 - 941
• Main Author: Blackwell, Sarah E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.06.2001; Elsevier
• Subjects: Anaphora; Conversational Maxims; Descriptive studies and applied theories; Linguistics; Noun Phrases; Pragmatics; Semantics and pragmatics; Spanish; Syntactic Processing; Coreference; Grice's maxims; Constraint; Levinson (S.); Listening comprehension; Discursive coherence; Semantic interpretation; Anaphora; Experimentation; Theoretical pragmatics
• ISSN: 0378-2166; 1879-1387
• DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(01)80034-5

This article examines the second half of a set of data from a study carried out to seek evidence of the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles proposed by Levinson (1987a,b, 1991) to account for the interpretation of NP anaphora. Whereas Blackwell (2000) addresses native speakers' interpretations of Spanish non-clitic reflexives versus pronouns when used in the same linguistic environment, the data analyzed in this article involves the interpretation of Spanish null subjects, pronouns, and lexical NPs. The objective of this portion of the study is to determine whether Levinson's predictions of coreference and non-coreference, which, Levinson argues, arise from the interaction of neo-Gricean principles, are supported by hearers' interpretations of coreference in Spanish utterances. An oral comprehension test for the interpretation of anaphoric NPs in Spanish utterances was devised and administered to 105 native speakers in northeastern Spain. The results reveal that, although evidence of several of Levinson's neo-Gricean sub-maxims is reflected in the data, his prediction of non-coreference from the use of a marked NP is often canceled by semantic and pragmatic 'consistency constraints' on coreference, as suggested by Huang (1991, 1994). The listeners' interpretations of coreference can be attributed primarily to inferences arising from the influence of one or more consistency constraints on coreference, as opposed to inferences based on the use of a marked lexical NP instead of an unmarked, minimal form. The central role that consistency