Abstract

GODOY, Mahayana Cristina  and  MAFRA, Matheus Araújo. Probabilistic models and the resolution of ambiguous pronouns in brazilian portuguese. Lingüística [online]. 2018, vol.34, n.2, pp.119-143. ISSN 2079-312X.  https://doi.org/10.5935/2079-312x.20180019.

This paper deals on how pragmatic information and grammatical factors interact while establishing the reference of ambiguous overt pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese. Our aim was to test whether Kehler et al. (2008) expectation-based model could explain our data by modulating the relations between pronoun production and pronoun interpretation through Bayes’ Rule. In order to do that, we ran a sentence-completion task akin to the experiments seen in Rohde (2008). The results corroborate Kehler et al. model by distinguishing pronoun interpretation and pronoun production as two distinct processes that are influenced by pragmatic and grammatical cues respectively.

Keywords : ambiguous pronoun; Brazilian Portuguese; coherence relations; probability models; psycholinguistics.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )