Preferential Interpretation of Null Pronouns in Ambiguous Sentences in Brazilian Portuguese by University Monolingual Speakers of the Letters Course: An Off-Line Study

Abstract

The linguistic phenomenon of ambiguity is concrete in the speech of those who speak any language and, by providing a duplicity of meanings, it usually generates doubts in the receiver of the statement. Thus, the second interlocutor takes more time to process the information and make the appropriate correlations. The objective of our reading comprehension study was to test the hypothesis that there is a syntactic function and position preference when there are ambiguous sentences formed by a temporal clause and a main clause with a null pronoun. These experimental sentences have both female and male proper nouns as subject and object. In this off-line experiment, ten English language students answered a Google Forms form with the same experimental sentences (16) and other distractors (32), in order to check their syntactic preferences between subject and object. As a result, it can be said that the null pronouns' correlference was mostly with the subject of the subordinate clause in canonical position. We conclude, therefore, that there is a compatibility of results with the predictions made by the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH) based on Carminati (2002).