Speakers of pro-drop languages differ in the degree to which they use overt referential expressions in discourse. This projects seeks to identify the typological factors responsible for this variation, and the effects that this variation has for sentence processing (in particular, the identification of argument structure in comprehension, and the role of NP-to-NP priming in production), for the management of referential identities in discourse, and for the way people balance their attention between events and the participants involved in these events.
Publications:
Bickel, Balthasar, 2006, Referential density in typological perspective. Plenary lecture at the Leipzig Spring School on Linguistic Diversity, March 22, 2006. [PDF]
Stoll, Sabine & Balthasar Bickel, in press, How deep are differences in referential density? In Elena Lieven et al. [eds.] Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: research in the traditions of Dan Slobin. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Bickel, Balthasar, 2003, Referential density in discourse and syntactic typology. Language 79, 708-36.
Last modified: , by Balthasar Bickel