iss1/12 Effects of Subordination on Referential Form and Interpretation

The aim of this paper is to investigate the distribution of the structural and semantic focusing effect (e.g., Stevenson et al (1994) and Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein ( 1995) respectively) on pronominal intepretation, and determine the conditions under which one prevails over the other. We propose that the syn-tactic locality created by subordinate clauses defines a reference domain where the interpretation of a pronoun is primarily determined by semantic focusing. Across structurally independent units, i.e., main clauses, pronominal interpre-tation is guided primarily by structural focusing. The proposal was tested in three experiments: two in English and one in Greek. The data showed that there is a strong preference to interpret ambiguous pronouns in main clauses as the structurally most salient entity in the previous main clause, in our case, the subject. In subordinate clauses, the interpretation of the ambiguous pro-nouns varies, a result consistent with semantic focusing accounts.