The role of age differences in adulthood

Studies of language production and interpretation evidence that adult aging involves cognitive decline, such as limitations of short-term working memory, perception and attention span, which influence referential skills (see Hendriks et al. 2014 and references therein). Brain aging, according to Shafto and Tyler (2014), does not affect the most core aspects of language processes, but it entails cognitive aging and it is related to a consequent decline in aspects of language production. Much of speech comprehension, on the other hand, is generally well-preserved across the lifespan, despite the complex computations required to automatically access and construct

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linguistic representations. In words of Shafto and Tyler (2014: 583), ‘although aging is associated with specific impairments in language production, most comprehension abilities remain stable as we age’. Abrams and Farrell (2010) explain that age-related deficits on spoken language tasks concern particularly word-retrieval problems causing disfluency. This is because speech production requires activating and retrieving phonological information, a process which becomes slower and more effortful with aging. It has been also showed that age-related inhibition problems affect language production, giving rise to decreased coherence in spoken language related to producing more off-topic speech (off-target verbosity) (James, Burke, Austin & Hulme 1998; Arbuckle, Nohara-LeClair & Pushkar 2000). Although language comprehension is said to be relatively unaffected in elderly speakers, varying degrees of memory loss and hearing loss, which are also associated with aging, may undoubtedly affect processing abilities in interpreting oral language (Pelc 2001). Restricting attention to referential skills relevant to the present study, expressing reference in discourse and resolving anaphoric pronouns are associated with domain- general cognitive systems, which determine the efficiency to process referential choices. Both comprehension and use of referential devices are cognitively demanding tasks and have been reported to decline with aging within adulthood; they are thus subject to age-related cognitive constraints (see Abrams & Farrell 2010; Hendriks et al. 2014; Ghaleh 2015; Kaltsa et al. 2015).

Hendriks et al. (2014) tested both production and comprehension of referential choices in Dutch children, young adults and elderly adults. The method used included a storytelling task and an anaphora comprehension task based on pre-recorded stories. Both tasks involved two same-gender characters. Their findings showed that the elderly speakers produced significantly more ambiguous pronouns in TS contexts than the younger adult speakers. On the other hand, in listening comprehension both young and old participants performed similarly in identifying the referent shift. It was thus observed that referential choices in comprehension did not exhibit significant differences between the two adult age groups. Hendriks et al. (2014: 404) conclude that ‘elderly speakers have difficulty in keeping track of the structure of the discourse and determining the prominence of the referents in the discourse’.

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Ghaleh (2015) also studied native speakers of New Zealand English in a series of AR experiments. She found that older adults were less accurate in interpreting anaphoric pronouns than younger adults due to differences in working memory capacity, which affects comprehension accuracy. The author also considered the possibility that comprehension may be mediated by a decline in inhibitory abilities responsible for the process of suppression of relevant information previously provided. It was overall suggested that ‘both differences in working memory capacity and age-related decline in suppression abilities can affect discourse comprehension’ (Ghaleh 2015: 154). Age-related changes in language processing involving resolution of ambiguous anaphora were also reported in Kaltsa et al. ’s (2015) study on monolingual Greek and bilingual Greek-Swedish groups (see details in §4.1.2). The older group in the AR experiments showed weak preferences in resolving both overt and null pronouns compared to the younger group. As to the role of chronological age, the authors confirm that ‘age within adulthood plays a role in the tendency to discriminate between preferences in pronominal resolution overall’ (Kaltsa et al. 2015: 281).

Schmitz and Scherger (2017) analysed production data from natural conversations testing adult HS of Italian living in Germany. The Italian performance of HS, contrary to monolinguals, showed that use of overt first-person pronoun increases at higher ages. This, however, was not the case for the third person. Such findings also point to age as a factor to be considered in assessing the production/omission of subjects.

3.10 Discussion

The findings confirming overuse of OSP in NS languages firmly suggest the need for a more in-depth approach when examining the formal and discourse-pragmatic properties of pronominal subjects in different languages. Even closely related NS languages may be different in the scope of their pronouns; hence potential crosslinguistic differences and their source should be identified and taken into account. In addition to the overuse of OSP even in combinations of two NS languages, the inverse pattern has been also found, that is, over-extension of the scope of NS, which still remains relatively unaddressed. For instance, in Sorace et al.

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(2009) over-acceptance of NS involved all bilingual children groups, regardless of age, language pairing and community language. NS in TS are generally considered to be under-explicit, which leads to the question of whether and to what extent such instances of NS should count as illicit. Ambiguity is a key condition in this respect. Crucially, NS are felicitously used in TS contexts by both monolingual and bilingual speakers of NS languages (Liceras et al. 2010; Blackwell & Lubbers Quesada 2012; Pinto 2013, 2014).

As for the qualitative difference between OSP and NS overuse, Rothman (2009a: 967) states that ‘overusing overt pronouns is not wrong per se. It is simply pragmatically odd. Worse, however, is the failure to use overt subjects when the discourse information does not provide an immediately identifiable/accessible subject’. Judy (2015: 171) also opine that ‘using overt subjects in topic maintenance contexts is perhaps less infelicitous than using null subjects when overt subjects are required for contrastive focus of topic shift (i.e. a question of redundancy versus lack of crucial information)’. Sorace et al. (2009: 473) made similar claims on NS’ overuse, which can be problematic since it may undermine communication. Inappropriate NS may result in ambiguity and hence processing complexity with consequences in communication. Since in production NS always occur in context, the point which needs to be foregrounded is how crucial the missing information of a NS is, whether it generates ambiguity and whether ambiguity is incidental or temporary or it remains unresolved. A more in-depth look into production data may offer insights into the (default) interpretation strategies in resolving contextless ambiguous anaphoric reference. As an interface phenomenon, subject pronouns distribution and interpretation in NS languages is demonstrated to be an unstable phenomenon in language contact situations, with redundancy of overt subjects being a recurring characteristic of this instability. As far as ambiguity is concerned, due to the multiplicity of factors affecting NS use (e.g. presence or absence of morphological cues and/or competing referents), evaluating NS as (non-)ambiguous requires attention to particular contexts of use. Finally, the role of age at the time of testing is an important variable potentially affecting referential skills and ability of both producing and interpreting anaphoric reference in discourse. It is thus crucial that this variable is taken into account.

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4. Greek and Spanish studies

4.1 Research studies in Greek

The present section provides a review of the most relevant studies conducted on Greek speakers with regard to the distribution and interpretation of subjects in Greek.

4.1.1 Monolingual Greek

One of the first studies on pronoun resolution strategies in Greek was conducted by Dimitriadis (1996) using the Centering Theory (Grosz et al. 1995). Available antecedents are viewed as ‘forward looking centres’. The ‘centres’ of each utterance are potential antecedents for the next utterance obeying a discourse prominence ranking. Corpus data indicated that the distinct semantic role of NS and OSP results in a division of labour. NS tend to link to the available highest-ranked centres, i.e. salient/prominent antecedents, which are compatible in terms of grammaticality and agentivity. The referring preference of NS is not as strong as that of OSP, since OSP are rarely construed with the most prominent antecedent of the preceding utterance. ‘The overt pronoun signals this merely by its presence, not by any featural or referential information that it provides’ (Dimitriadis 1996: 2). The strong bias towards a less salient/prominent antecedent is thus considered to be part of the OSP’ conventionalised meaning. However, the division of labour only partially depends on the lexical properties of pronominal forms since pragmatic factors allow flexibility in establishing anaphoric relationships; thus, AR is non-categorical.

Miltsakaki (2007) examined referential properties of NS and OSP in Greek in intersentential AR using written completion data elicited from a free sentence continuation task. She followed the claims of the semantic focusing hypothesis of Stevenson, Crawley and Kleinman (1994): the verb, due to its semantic interpretation, has focusing properties depending on the thematic role of the entities. Action verbs focus on the entity with the patient role independently of its syntactic realisation, i.e.

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even if it is realised as the object of a verb. The monolingual Greek native speakers had to complete sentences such as (24) from Miltsakaki (2007: 3).

(24) O travmatioforeas kuvalise ton astheni. Ekinos...

‘The stretcher-bearer carried the patient. HE…’

The results showed a strong tendency of the Greek speakers to continue the given discourse with reference to the entity with the patient role in object position. In a second similar study, the continuation after the first clause was completely free, that is, the beginning was not provided, so the participants could freely use a referent and a referring expression of their choice. When the continuation was with a matrix clause, reference to the object-patient was chiefly made by means of a strong pronoun or noun phrase. When the continuation was with an embedded clause, the object-patient was more often referenced with a NS. On the other hand, reference to agent-subject antecedents was accomplished using NS in both matrix and embedded clause continuations. Altogether, the most common continuation (44%) was with embedded clauses and null reference to the object-patient of the previous sentence, such as in (25) from Miltsakaki (2007: 4).

(25) I mitera filise tin kori, epiði perase tis eksetasis.

‘The mother kissed the daughter, because [she] passed the exams.’

The findings show that a mapping between choice of linguistic expression and entity salience is a complicated notion. Miltsakaki (2007: 5) argues that ‘entity accessibility within the boundaries of a syntactic sentence is primarily determined by the semantic relations that are established by the predicates of the main and embedded clauses’. It may also be the case that the Greek demonstrative is employed for object reference in matrix clause continuations in a comparable way to the use of a stressed pronoun in English, i.e. to mark TS, or to counteract parallelism effect. In matrix clause continuations, NS preferentially linked to the subject referent while strong pronouns referred to the object referent. Finally, word order (i.e. the position of subject) did not significantly play a role in the participants’ choice of reference in continuations.

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Argyri and Sorace’s (2007) study investigated the potential crosslinguistic influence from English to Greek in the use and interpretation of subjects in Greek based on the claim that these are syntax-pragmatics interface structures considered to be vulnerable. The participants were simultaneous bilingual eight-year-old children living in Greece and in the UK as well as monolingual controls. The interface constructions involved distribution of NS vs OSP in [-TS] contexts and distribution of preverbal vs postverbal subjects in wide focus contexts. The narrow-syntax constructions involved the use of preverbal vs postverbal subjects in what-embedded interrogatives and the placement of objects. The methods consisted of an elicited production picture task and an off-line acceptability judgement task, whose design was based on questions and answers. Examples of the items used for elicited production of NS or OSP in [-TS] and the forced-choice acceptability judgment task are (26) and (27) respectively. (26) Question: Jati pije i Elenij sto periptero?

‘Why did Elenij go to the kiosk?’

Expected answer: Epiði j ithele na aγorasi efimeriða.

‘Because [she]j wanted to buy a newspaper.’

(27) Question: Jati pije o Jorγosj sto vivliopolio to proi?

‘Why did George go to the bookshop this morning?’ Puppet A: Epiði j ithele na aγorasi ena vivlio.

Puppet B: Epiði aftosj ithele na aγorasi ena vivlio.

‘Because hej wanted to buy a book.’

Monolingual Greek children aged 7;5-9;7 years and adults always produced a NS in the [-TS] condition. However, in the acceptability judgment task the Greek children did not consistently accept the NS utterance in this condition, unlike adults. This is an interesting finding pointing out difference in performance as manifested in production and interpretation modalities. It also shows that monolingual children, at least up to the age of 9 years old, may accept redundant OSP for topic reference, i.e. for reference to salient subject antecedents.

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Prentza and Tsimpli (2012) explored AR of pronominal ambiguity in Greek monolingual adults applying two conditions: pragmatically neutral and pragmatically biased conditions. The test sentences presented contexts of forward anaphora with the linearly first clause being either matrix or embedded. The latter clauses were introduced with the subordinators ‘when/while’ and ‘because’ as well as the coordinators ‘and’ and ‘but’. The results showed that, although pragmatically plausibility played a role, NS were preferentially attached to subject referents by monolingual Greeks and OSP to object referents. Crucially, the aforementioned correlation was stronger in the case of OSP referring to object antecedents than in NS referring to subject antecedents, even in cases of pragmatic biases. The authors conclude that the form which is more underspecified for reference, i.e. NS, is consistent with the default TC interpretation and that the OSP is strongly associated with object antecedents in Greek.

Papadopoulou et al. (2015) conducted a study on resolution of intrasentential ambiguous NS and OSP anaphora in Greek children and adults. The children participants were classified into groups aged 6-6;3, 7-7;8, and 10-11;2. Two experiments examined coordination of grammatical and discourse-pragmatic information, required for NS and OSP ambiguity resolution in sentence interpretation. One experiment focused on the resolution of NS and the other experiment on the resolution of OSP. The data elicitation method consisted of a self-paced listening picture verification task and the test sentences were segmented as shown in (28). (28) O papus / miluse / ðinata / ston egono tu / otan / ðjavaze / ena vivlio.

‘The old-man spoke loudly to his grand-child when (he) read a book.’

The adults consistently preferred to associate NS with matrix subjects and OSP with matrix objects. In the OSP condition, the object was chosen significantly faster than the subject referent, while in the NS condition the subject was not chosen faster than the object referent. Children, on the other hand, showed a different pattern. OSP were resolved in an adult-like fashion by the oldest children, but this was not the case for the two younger groups who also linked OSP to subjects. NS manifested a ‘U- shaped’ development, since the two younger groups performance was similar to

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adults, but the oldest child group selected the object antecedent more often than all other groups. Consequently, there was no clear NS resolution pattern in Greek at the age of 10-11 years. The authors claim that OSP carry the discourse feature of [+TS], whereas NS are underspecified regarding discourse features, thus do not directly select a preferred antecedent allowing more reference possibilities. It was also stressed that the feature of [+TS] is not a grammatical feature, hence (un)grammaticalities do not obtain in any resolution routines. AR is regulated by pragmatic principles involving degrees of preferences rather than categorical distinctions between grammaticality and ungrammaticality, as also asserted by other researchers (e.g. Carminati 2002; Tsimpli & Sorace 2006; Sorace & Filiaci 2006; Rothman 2009a; Shin & Cairns 2012; Kaltsa et al. 2015; Georgopoulos 2017).

4.1.1.1 Definiteness in anaphora resolution

Mastropavlou, Katsiperi, Fotiadou, Fleva, Peristeri and Tsimpli’s (2014) study looked into AR in adult Greek considering also the factor of definiteness in relation to the syntactic positions of the antecedents. The factors examined included the form of anaphoric expression (null vs overt), the syntactic position of the antecedent (subject vs object) and their interaction, i.e. if the reduced (null) forms prefer a prominent antecedent (subject) and the strong (overt) forms select a less prominent antecedent (object). Additionally, it was assumed that definiteness could enhance or diminish antecedent prominence. The structures examined were (a) a matrix clause with a definite subject and a definite object, which is considered to be the baseline; (b) a matrix clause with a definite subject and an indefinite object, and (c) a matrix clause with an indefinite subject and a definite object. As regards (c), the authors explain that when the subject is weakened because of indefiniteness, the object is not expected to be definite, which renders this structure marked. The matrix clauses were followed by an adverbial clause, which presented a NS or an OSP, and the participants chose its antecedent in an online self-paced listening and picture- matching task. An example is shown in (29) (Mastropavlou et al. 2014: 11).

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(29) I/Mia γramateas voithuse ti/mia nosokoma otan afti/iði eγrafe ena γrama.

‘The/A secretary was helping the/a nurse when she/already was writing a letter.’

Pjos eγrafe to γrama?

‘Who was writing the letter?’

In the OSP condition, there was a significant effect of definiteness in the structure with indefinite subject. The structure with indefinite subject and definite object marked the slowest reaction times, while the structure with both definite subject and object was found to be the fastest one. In the NS condition, definiteness also had a significant effect with the same pattern of reaction times. With regard to the antecedent preferences, the object antecedent was significantly preferred in the OSP conditions. However, NS were not significantly chosen as referring to subjects in the conditions of definite subject-definite object and definite subject-indefinite object. Moreover, embedded NS in structures with matrix indefinite subjects and definite objects were linked to objects significantly more than with subject antecedents. In sum, it was demonstrated that definiteness manipulations affected antecedent preferences in the NS condition. Preference for the object antecedent in the NS condition was intensified when the subject of the matrix clause was indefinite, marking also an increased processing difficulty as indicated by listening and response times. Since interpretation of sentences with OSP was not affected by definiteness alternation, the study suggests that definiteness affects AR only in cases of NS sentences, where no preference was attested, i.e. cases of high ambiguity. In