The production of referring expressions is influenced by the likelihood of next mention

Abstract

The present study provides converging evidence across three next-mention biases that likelihood of coreference influences the choice of referring expression: implicit causality (IC), the goal bias of transfer-of-possession (ToP) verbs, and implicit consequentiality (I-Cons). A pilot study and four experiments investigated coreference production in German using a forced-reference paradigm. The pilot study used object- and subject-biased IC verbs, showing a statistically marginal influence of next-mention bias on referential expressions, albeit mediated by grammatical function and feature overlap between antecedents. Experiment 1 focused on these features for object reference with ToP verbs, showing effects of coreference bias. In a within-participants comparison, Experiment 2 showed comparable effects for two classes of IC verbs, stimulus–experiencer and experiencer–stimulus predicates. Experiment 3 replicated and extended the IC form effects to another verb class, agent–evocator verbs. Finally, Experiment 4 revealed effects on anaphoric form also for I-Cons, while simultaneously replicating the effect observed for IC.