On-line resolution of anaphoric pronouns: Effects of inference making and verb semantics

An experiment is reported in which sentences containing anaphoric pronouns were presented for self-paced reading. Some of the pronouns could be resolved on the basis of their gender alone, others required inferences based on knowledge about the world. Subjects spent longer reading the second clause of a sentence when an inference was required to resolve the pronoun, suggesting that the pronouns were resolved as they were read. Resolution was not delayed until it was required by the experimental task of answering a question. The data were also pertinent to the question of whether verb semantics enables a reader to predict subsequent pronominalization. It was found that any such prediction only facilitated reading when the pronoun could be resolved on the basis of syntactic information.