动词隐含因果性和语篇话题性对回指选择的影响

动词隐含因果性和语篇话题性是制约回指选择的重要因素，但两者对回指选择的影响机制及交互作用仍不明确。语篇生成续写实验表明，动词隐含因果性确实会影响到后续指称对象的选择，并在原因类联结关系中得到加强；当动词语义倾向回指的对象为新引入的实体，而非语篇话题时，其回指倾向最显著。这说明基于给定语境生成语篇的过程遵循省力原则，但与语篇话题性相比，动词隐含因果性对回指倾向的制约更具刚性。

The Effect of Verbs' Implicit Causality and Discourse Topicality on Anaphoric Choice

Implicit causality describes a semantic property of transitive verbs that relate two nouns referring to animate beings in such a way that it is implicated that one of the nouns is the assumed locus of the underlying cause of the action or attitude. Namely, the implicit causality of a verb is toward the argument that initiates an action or evokes a response. Verbs whose arguments fill the roles of Initiator (I) and Reactor (R) in a psychological relationship can be analyzed into two types. For N1 type, Initiator appears in the subject position in the surface structure of a sentence, and Reactor appears in the object position; for N2 type, the surface position of the roles is the reverse. In both cases, the relative accessibility of Initiator in the discourse model constructed during reading is increased and facilitates the processing of sentences that contain those verbs. Cognitive linguistic and psycholinguistic studies on reference processing have shown that verbs exhibiting implicit causality could increase the relative accessibilities of their arguments (Initiators) in the discourse model. Implicit causality is used proactively, allowing readers to focus on, and perhaps even predict, whom or what will be talked about next. Especially, the strength and persistence of implicit causality as a referent processing cue is enhanced when the connective because is present. Topic is a functional notion only at the discourse level, minimally at the paragraph or clausal chain level. Referring to the entity within current focus of attention, it does influence whether and how an entity is mentioned in the subsequent discourse. When the same referent reoccurs consecutively in Zero (?), a clause-chain would be constructed, characterizing high coherence in cognition. In this situation, the referent has a high degree of topicality and predicts high possibility of recurrence in subsequent discourse fragments.  Though it has been found that verbs' implicit causality and discourse topicality can affect the anaphoric choice, it is unclear how they jointly affect it. It is equally unclear whether interaction exists between them in the processing; and if it exists, how they will interact with each other and which one plays a more decisive role. Therefore, further investigations should be conducted to address these concerns. This study goes beyond the local factor of verbs′ implicit causality to consider discourse factors of topicality, and aims to explore their interactions and effects on the anaphoric choice during discourse production. Based on a pilot study of verbs in Chinese, ten N1 type and N2 type of verbs are respectively selected according to their degree of implicit causality. Then a continuation experiment is carried out to simulate the process of discourse production under the given context. Equivalent familiarity of entities rendered in noun phrases is guaranteed, and consistent structure of N1 V N2 in the target sentence is maintained. The factors of verb type, discourse topicality and the causal connective yinwei (because) are manipulated in eight conditions, namely, conditions a, b, c, and d for either N1 or N2 type. Because the anaphoric bias can be identified by looking at the first subject referent and its expression in the production, three parameters are annotated for statistical analysis, that is, the first subject referent (N1/N2/others) and its linguistic forms (/Pron./NP) in the continuation, and the type of connectivity between the target sentence and the immediate continuation, i.e., cause, consequence, specification, contrast, etc. The results show that the implicit causality of the verb indeed affects the anaphoric choice, especially with the presence of the causal connective yinwei. Noticeably, the anaphoric bias that is initiated by the verbs' implicit causality proves to be the strongest when the referent is a newly introduced entity rather than the discourse topic. This further indicates that the discourse production observes the Principle of Least Effort. Overall, the verbs' implicit causality overrides discourse topicality in constraining the anaphoric choice.