Comprehending pronouns in Chinese: evidence for cross-language differences in referential processing

• The results showed that readers of Chinese processed anaphoric pronouns in a manner similar to English readers.
• The results showed that readers of Chinese processed cataphoric pronouns differently than English readers.
• Chinese readers took longer to process zero cataphoric pronouns than zero anaphoric pronouns.

The research investigated the extent to which pronoun comprehension occurs differently for readers of Chinese (Mandarin) and English. We report experiments in which Chinese readers processed conditions similar to those tested previously in English. In Experiment 1, participants provided intuitive judgments of co-reference. In Experiment 2, additional participants comprehended sentences as reading time was measured. In both experiments, all sentences were composed of two clauses. One clause contained a male or female noun phrase (NP); the other, contained one of three types of pronouns: a) 他ta or he; b) 她 ta she; or c) a zero pronoun. Participants' intuitive judgment revealed that in Chinese, as in English, pronouns and NPs of the same gender were interpreted as co-referent most of the time (i.e., over 70%). Results indicated that pronouns following NPs (i.e., anaphoric pronouns) were processed similarly in Chinese and in English. Pronouns preceding NPs (i.e., cataphoric pronouns) were processed differently in Chinese than in English. Zero cataphoric pronouns were more difficult to process than zero anaphoric pronouns. Implications for universal versus language-specific processing strategies are discussed.