Structural and Pragmatic Constraints on the Interpretation of Reflexives and Pronouns

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Jeffrey T.Runner博士和Michael K.Tanenhaus博士将进行为期三年的语言学研究，考察参与者如何解释两类重要的指代词：代词和反身代词。该项目将使用一个轻型的头戴式眼睛跟踪器来监控眼球运动，参与者在听所描述的活动描述的同时识别场景中的一张图片(例如，“John告诉Bill关于他自己的照片。”)。参与者看着哪些物体，以及他们看着它们的时候，提供了他们在解释所指单词时正在考虑哪些指称的证据。本研究的目的是：(A)通过在线任务而不是显性判断来考察这些指称词的解释；(B)评估语法因素在多大程度上定义了代词和反身代词的初始指称集；(C)考察语法因素与语用和语篇因素之间的交互作用；以及(D)探索潜在的代词和反身词语指称集相互排斥的程度。这项研究的结果将对理解人们如何分配指称具有重要意义，这是当前理论语言学和应用语言学研究的中心目标。参考消解是开发高效语言理解系统中最核心和最具挑战性的问题之一，包括正在开发的用于生物医学应用的系统。参照物分辨困难也与某些类型的语言困难有关，这些困难是由脑损伤引起的。有关眼球运动和语音的时间安排的信息也将为正在开发基于计算机的语言理解系统的科学家提供信息，该系统使用眼球运动来帮助解决歧义单词和指代表达。

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. Jeffrey T. Runner and Michael K. Tanenhaus will conduct three years of linguistic research examining how participants interpret two important classes of referring words: pronouns and reflexives. The project will use a lightweight head-mounted eye tracker to monitor eye movements as participants identify a picture in a scene while listening to descriptions of the depicted activities (e.g., "John told Bill about the picture of himself."). Which objects participants look at, and when they look at them, provides evidence about which referents they are considering as they interpret the referring words. The goals of this research are to (a) investigate the interpretation of these referring words with on-line tasks rather than explicit judgments; (b) evaluate the extent to which grammatical factors define the initial set of referents for pronouns and reflexives; (c) examine the interaction of grammatical factors with pragmatic and discourse factors; and (d) explore the extent to which the potential set of referents for pronouns and reflexives is mutually exclusive. The results of this research will be important for understanding how people assign reference, which is a central goal of current research in theoretical and applied linguistics. Reference resolution is one of the most central and challenging problems in developing efficient language understanding systems, including systems that are being developed for bio-medical applications. Difficulties in reference resolution are also associated with some types of language difficulties that arise due to brain damage. Information about the timing of eye movements and speech will also inform scientists who are developing computer-based language understanding systems that use eye movements to help resolve ambiguous words and referring expressions.