Demonstrative Pronouns as Anti-Logophoric Pronouns: An Experimental Investigation

In this paper we report the results of two experimental studies in which we tested the claim of Hinterwimmer and Bosch (2017) that German demonstrative pronouns are anti-logophoric pronouns: They avoid discourse referents as antecedents that function as perspectival centers. In both experiments we tested the interpretative options of demonstrative pronouns in text segments which were either perspectivally neutral or in which the narrator’s or a topical protagonist’s perspective was foregrounded. Taken together, the experimental results are most compatible with a slightly modified version of the analysis argued for in Hinterwimmer and Bosch (2017) according to which topical discourse referents in neutral narration automatically become perspectival centers