This paper explores native Korean speakers’ preference for pronominal anaphora resolution in Korean. More specifically, it empirically tests the predictions of the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH), which was originally proposed for Italian pronouns, and investigates the effects of case-marking on the referential preference of overt pronouns. A self-paced reading experiment was conducted with thirty-nine native Korean-speaking adults, and reading times were examined in four conditions created by crossing two factors: pronoun type (null pronoun vs. overt pronoun with the topic marker –nun vs. overt pronoun with the nominative marker –ka) and antecedent bias (subject vs. object). The results showed that Korean speakers preferred to interpret null pronouns as referring to subject antecedents, as predicted by the PAH. However, overt pronouns behaved differently depending on the case marking of the pronoun: while the overt pronouns with the nominative marker showed a preference for object antecedents, no preference was observed for those with the topic marker. These findings suggest that while the mechanism of pronominal anaphora resolution in Korean may be explained by the PAH in general, case-marking on the pronoun also plays a role as one of the factors influencing resolution preference.
This paper explores native Korean speakers’ preference for pronominal anaphora resolution in Korean. More specifically, it empirically tests the predictions of the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH), which was originally proposed for Italian pronouns, and investigates the effects of case-marking on the referential preference of overt pronouns. A self-paced reading experiment was conducted with thirty-nine native Korean-speaking adults, and reading times were examined in four conditions created by crossing two factors: pronoun type (null pronoun vs. overt pronoun with the topic marker –nun vs. overt pronoun with the nominative marker –ka) and antecedent bias (subject vs. object). The results showed that Korean speakers preferred to interpret null pronouns as referring to subject antecedents, as predicted by the PAH. However, overt pronouns behaved differently depending on the case marking of the pronoun: while the overt pronouns with the nominative marker showed a preference for object antecedents, no preference was observed for those with the topic marker. These findings suggest that while the mechanism of pronominal anaphora resolution in Korean may be explained by the PAH in general, case-marking on the pronoun also plays a role as one of the factors influencing resolution preference.
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