Quantifying Discourse Support for Omitted Pronouns

TL;DR

This paper investigates how discourse coherence influences the omission of pronouns in languages with pro-drop features, demonstrating that character-verb continuity supports pronoun dropping through empirical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a quantitative model linking character-verb continuity to pronoun omission, providing empirical evidence for discourse-driven pro-drop mechanisms.

Findings

Omitted subjects show higher character-verb continuity salience.

Discourse coherence with story characters facilitates pronoun omission.

Character-verb continuity predicts pronoun dropping in pro-drop languages.

Abstract

Pro-drop is commonly seen in many languages, but its discourse motivations have not been well characterized. Inspired by the topic chain theory in Chinese, this study shows how character-verb usage continuity distinguishes dropped pronouns from overt references to story characters. We model the choice to drop vs. not drop as a function of character-verb continuity. The results show that omitted subjects have higher character history-current verb continuity salience than non-omitted subjects. This is consistent with the idea that discourse coherence with a particular topic, such as a story character, indeed facilitates the omission of pronouns in languages and contexts where they are optional.