arXiv Open Access 2022

Quantifying Discourse Support for Omitted Pronouns

Shulin Zhang Jixing Li John Hale

Lihat Sumber

Abstrak

Pro-drop is commonly seen in many languages, but its discourse motivations have not been well characterized. Inspired by the topic chain theory in Chinese, this study shows how character-verb usage continuity distinguishes dropped pronouns from overt references to story characters. We model the choice to drop vs. not drop as a function of character-verb continuity. The results show that omitted subjects have higher character history-current verb continuity salience than non-omitted subjects. This is consistent with the idea that discourse coherence with a particular topic, such as a story character, indeed facilitates the omission of pronouns in languages and contexts where they are optional.

Topik & Kata Kunci

cs.CL

Penulis (3)

Shulin Zhang

Jixing Li

John Hale

Format Sitasi

APA MLA BibTeX

Zhang, S., Li, J., Hale, J. (2022). Quantifying Discourse Support for Omitted Pronouns. https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07961

Akses Cepat

Lihat di Sumber

Informasi Jurnal

Tahun Terbit: 2022
Bahasa: en
Sumber Database: arXiv
Akses: Open Access ✓