Please join us for the following talk in room G26, 7 George Square. The link to the online Teams meeting will be sent to the mailing list closer to the time for those who cannot join us in Edinburgh.

Speaker

Time and date

Tuesday 14th April, 2 PM.

Title and abstract

Resolving Null and Overt Pronouns in Thai: Evidence from an Interpretation Task

Thai allows both subjects and objects to be omitted, raising important questions about how comprehenders identify the intended referent. Although previous work has suggested that null pronouns favour topic continuity and overt pronouns may signal topic shift, evidence for Thai has been largely descriptive. This study tests whether Thai L1 speakers show systematic antecedent preferences for null and overt pronouns in complex sentences, and whether pronoun form affects interpretation. Seventy four Thai speakers completed a sentence interpretation task with 80 critical items manipulating pronoun form and pronoun position. The results showed a clear effect of structural position: pronouns in subject position strongly favoured subject antecedents, while pronouns in object position yielded near chance choices. By contrast, pronoun form did not reliably influence interpretation. The findings suggest that Thai pronoun resolution is shaped primarily by structural position rather than by the null overt contrast, and point to discourse coherence and topic structure as key targets for future research.

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