How Focus and Position Affect the Interpretation of Demonstrative Pronouns

Abstract

The explicit marking of focus has a measurable impact on language comprehension, including the interpretation of pronouns, but so far the impact of focus on demonstrative pronouns has been largely overlooked. Using story-completion experiments with ditransitive contexts in German, we tested the role of focus in demonstrative pronoun resolution using the tools of the Bayesian model for pronouns, and furthermore investigated whether final position influences demonstrative pronoun interpretation independently of focus. We found that demonstrative pronouns are indeed influenced by focus to a similar extent as personal pronouns, but the influence for demonstratives is mediated via the next-mention bias. Final position also influences demonstrative pronouns, mediated not via the next-mention bias but the production likelihood.