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<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?> <Paper uid="C92-1051"> <Title>Zero Pronouns as Experiencer in Japanese Discourse</Title> <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 2 Interactions between </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"/> <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> Ira and Kureta </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> We begin with the following discourse.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> where the last line, and henceforth, shows that the native's intuitive interpretation is that there being the only possible antecedent of the zero subject O,,,bj, and in this case, it is Alice. Both the centering algorithm proposed by Walker etal \[1, 8\] and Kameyarua's prop erty sharing constraint \[4, 5\] predict Alice ms a strongly preferred antecedent of tt, e zero subject, O,~bj, of (1). So, they correctly predict the native's intuition. Let's look at the case where the second sentence of (1) is replaced with the following.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> ~),ubj Carol no koto wo (2) ~-SUBJ CaroI-GEN -NOM-ACC sinpai site -ita karada.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> be anxious being-PAST because ~Beeause O),,bj was being anxious about</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> where the last line of the above example, and henceforth, indicates the native's intuition of the order of preference for antecedents of C/0~bj in ease we have more than one possible antecedents.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> In (2) both Alice and Betty are the possible antecedent of C/,~bj, even though Betty is stronger. Both Betty and Alice can be derived by the theory in \[8\]. However, since Alice is subject, their theory predicts that Alice is the prinrary candidate of antecedent of/l),ubj.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> This is explained by the well known fact that &quot;ita&quot;-sufllx, which is used in the second sentence in this case, describes the event from an outsider's point of view, which, presumably, makes the antecedent of zero subject of &quot;ita&quot;-suilixed verb not be the linguistically salient expressions, in this case, the subject of the first sentence but be some other person.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> Therefore the zero subject ~deg~bj tends not to corefer with the subject of the first utterance Alice which is a linguistically salient expression. As the result #,~j tends to corefer with Betty. Basically this explanation comes from Kameyama's accounts in \[4\].</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> Look at the discourses whose first sentences are the saute as the tlrst sentence of (1) and second sentences are the following sentences respectively, in which each of the second sentences describes not a psychological state but a physical action of meeting.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="10"> eki de Carol to station-LOC Carol-OBJ atte-ita karada.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="11"> be-PAST meeting because AcrEs DE COLING-92. NANTES. 23-28 AOUr 1992 3 2 5 PROC. OF COLING-92. NANTES. AUG. 23-28. 1992 'Because 49,~b./was meeting Carol at the station yesterday.'</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="13"> Nevertheless the contents described in the The second sentences are categorically different is: ones, these two series of discourses, say (1)(2) and (3)(4) respectively, show the similar preferences for C/,,bj. Therefore the tentative summarization of preference mechanism so far is the following.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="14"> Principle 1 (Preference(tentative)) Consider a discourse of two sentences or a complex sentence in which one of the sentence or clause describes the action taken by an agent, and the other sentence or clause provides the reason of the action respectively. i. As a default, a zero subject of one sen- (8) fence or clause that describe the reason corefers with the subject of the other sentence (clause) unless there is a non-subject topic in the other sentence (or clause).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="15"> 2. When &quot;ita&quot;-sufflxed verb is used in one sentence or clause that describes the reason, their zero subjects tend not to corefer with the (topic} subject of the other sentence ( or clause}.</Paragraph> </Section> </Section> <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 3 Problematic </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> Cases, &quot;ita-morat-ta&quot; Combination Let's compare the following three discourses which consist of two sentences respectively, and whose first sentences are common one shown as follows:</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> These discourses all have the same &quot;moratta&quot; -suffixed and &quot;ita &quot;-suffixed verbs followed by &quot;karada&quot; cornbination in the first and the second sentence respectively. In &quot;oshiete-morat-ta&quot;, &quot;(te)-morat&quot; causativizes the verb, namely the agent of the action of asking some action to other one is the antecedent of the subject, and, the more important point is that &quot;morat-ta&quot;-suffaxed verb describes the action from the subject's point of vicw. As the result, in these discourses the empathy locus of the first sentence is Betty. While they are almost identical in grammatical structures, the preferred antecedents of zero sub-ject (I),~b./ are quite different. Therefore this difference is expected to comc from the contents of verb phrase of the second sentences.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> First we consider the preference of zero sub-ject based on &quot;morat-ta&quot;- &quot;ita&quot; combination. Since Betty is not only the subject but also the empathy locus of the first sentence, and &quot;ita&quot;-suffixed verb describes the event from the outsider's view point, namely, from nonempathy locus, Alice should be preferred as the antecedent of zero subject of the second sentence. Although this expectation coincides with the actual preference of (8), it does not with that of (6) or (7). This discrepancy cannot be explained by any syntactic theory, ACI'ES DE COL1NG-92. NANTES, 23-28 AOUT 1992 3 2 6 PROC. OF COLING-92, NANTES, AUa. 23-28, 1992 because (6), (7) arid (8), all have the identical syntactic structure. Neither the proposed centering theories \[1, 8, 4, 5\] nor our tentative preference principle 1 can account for this phenomena. The reason is that (1) timy use only the notions of topic, empathy, and the effect of 'Sta&quot; and &quot;morat-tPS'-suffix, (2) all these discourses are the same in these notions and suffixes. To explain this discrepancy, hopefully, in more unified fashion in order to be able to apply the resulting theory to a variety of cases, is the real aim of the paper.</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="5" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 4 Experiencer and Agent </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"/> <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> of Action </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> It is cognitively reasonable to assume that when a human agent takes a volitional action it should be the case that the agent has a certain psychological reason. This assumption is exemplified, for instance, in the following discourse. null Clearly and intuitively the antecedent of zero subject of the subordinated clause is John who is the topic subject of main clause. The subject of the main clause should have the psychological reason of iris volitional action, oi harat (= make (I) away , (where = the dog) ), and the subordinated clause states that John experienced a certain fear. The intuition of John being the antecedent of the zero subject supports the assumption that the agent nmst have the psychological reason. In other words, the agent of his/her volitional action must be an experieneer of the psychological state which should be the reason for that action. On the contrary in the following discourse the agent of the action, boku (- I), is not identical with the experiencer of fear, say, John. Its unacceptability endorses the above assumption.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> However if John's fearing can be recognized by some other person through observing it, and the agent of the action coincides with this person, the discourse is acceptable as exemplified in the following examl)le.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> C/; -OBJ make away -PAST 'Becanse John seemed to fear the dogi, I made it; away.' In this case &quot;you-rid' used in the subordinated clause makes John's fearing (&quot;kowakatta&quot;) state t)e observed from not John but some other not yet specified person, say, X.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> Actually after reading the main clause, we know that the. agent of the action is the male speakcr, 1 (= boku), and can infer that the observer X coincides with I consistently t)eo cause X haz not yet had any particular refereat. That is why (l 1) is acceptable. And this acceptability is accounted h)r by the above assumption. Through the careful examination about the actual discourses, we also confirmed that all these kind of phenomena are correctly ot)served even in the case that two consecutive sentences are in a subordination relation, say, one describes an action taken by the agent attd the other gives the reason of that action. Now we have conlirmed the assumption posed at the beginning of this section with some elaborations done in the previous lines, so we state it ~.s the following principle.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> Definition 1 (Experiencer) Ezperiencer is defined as a person who directly experiences . certain psychological state in his/her own mind.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> AcrEs DE COL1NG-92, Nn~rrES, 23-28 AOUT 1992 3 2 7 Pgoc. ov COLING-92, NA/,ZFES, AUG. 23-28. 1992 Definition 2 (Observer) Observer is defined as a person who, from his/her point of view, recognizes some other experieneer's psychological state by observing that experieneer. Principle 2 (Agent is Exp. or Obs.) Consider a discourse in which the subordinated sentence (or clause) expresses a psychological reason of the volitional action taken by an agent which main sentence (or clause) describes. The agent who takes the volitional action should be either the experiencer or observer of the situation described in the subordinated sentence (or clause).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> This principle, superficially, seems to be a kind of commonsense inference rule. However, since it comes from the very nature of human behavior so deeply, it should be regarded as the control hueristics in cognition. Now we restate the effect of &quot;ita&quot;-suflix in terms of this principle. Consider the following examples.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> This sentence is unacceptable or at most marginal because of discrepancy of the agent of action and the experiencer. In Japanese, even if we consider an observer, he/she could not be the agent of action when the experience, for instances being hungry or being sad, is not observable from outsiders \[6\]. However if we replace verb &quot;sui-ta&quot; with ira-suffixed one, &quot;suite-its&quot;, shown in the following, Bill's hunger is known to be observed from other person, in this case Boku(= I) who coincides with the agent of action of giving a piece of bread. So it does not violate Principle 2. Actually the following (13) is acceptable under this interpretation.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="10"> him a piece of bread.' In conclusion, '~ita'-suflix makes the event be described from some outsider's point of view. Therefore by identifying that outsider with the agent of action, the agent becomes to be the observer of the state which is the reason of his/her vohtional action.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="11"> One of the important issues about Principle 2 is the relation among this principle, Kameyama's property sharing and the centering algorithm \[8\]. At first glance Principle 2 is exemplified linguistically by subjectempathy( 'ident' in her term ) sharing \[5\], or by the combination of preference for Cb (Backward Looking Center ) continuing and Cf Ranking \[8\]. Actually sometimes it is the case. However Principle 2 is based on the very nature of human behavior. Therefore it generally provides more indirect explanations than their theories do. But even in the cases their theories do not provide a correct and unique prediction, like (6), (7) and (8), Principle 2 would provide a certain guideline as will be shown in the following section.</Paragraph> </Section> </Section> <Section position="6" start_page="0" end_page="2" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 5 Typology of Predicates </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> It's time to explain the discrepancy of interpretations of (6), (7) and (8) noted in section 3.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> Before mlalyzing (6), (7) and (8), we examine the minimal pairs of these in which non &quot;ita&quot;-suffixed verbs are used in the second sentences, like the followings: In all cases, the antecedent of the zero sub-ject is Betty who is the agent of 'qetting her inform&quot; action described in the first sentence (5). This fact is one of the consequences derived by Principle 2. Anyway we can regard Betty as the expected point of view, henceforth called POV, in the second sentences, say, above shown (14), (15) and (16) and also in previously shown (6), (7) and (8). As the consequence Betty is expected to be the primary candidate of antecedent of zero subject C/,~bi in all these cases.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> Now we start to examine the original cases.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> First we examine (8).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> Verb &quot;au&quot; ( meet in English), the stem of the verb &quot;atte&quot; used in (8), could describe the meeting event from the outside of the agent who is actually meeting. In other words a meeting action is observed from the people around as well as the agent him/herself. Frmn the first sentence (5) we know that the agent of volitional action is Betty who should have the reason of the action in the situation described by the second sentence. In this ease the &quot;ita&quot;-suflix is strong enough to take the non-agent outsider's point of view, namely Alice. As a result Alice took the meeting action and Betty was to be an observer. Since it coincides with the intuitive preference, and this account relies on Principle 2, we once again confirm that principle, llowever the preferences of the previously shown (6) and (7) are, at first glance, the counter examples of the combination of Principle 2 and the linguistic force of &quot;ita&quot;-suttix.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> Therefore we have to try to find another reason to explain these phenomena. We do not have any syntactic clue to explain the difference of their I)references, because they are syntactically almost the same. The next thing we should examine is the contents of verb phrase in the second sentences. Through careful examining of number of verbs and so called &quot;subjective adjectives&quot; 1 in sentences of this type of structure, we found inductively that they are categorized into at least three groups ms the followings.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> tFor instance, &quot;Kmtasii&quot;(be sad) is regarded as a subjective adjective in Japanese.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> Principle 3 (Predicates Categorization) POV Neutral Verb &quot;au&quot; used in (8) is of this type. This type of verb describes a physical action which can be described easily and naturally \[rom the point of view of anyone around the agent of this action, of course including the agent him/herself. As the consequence, the agent of the action described by this type of verb can be interpreted fully under the control of &quot;ita&quot;-suJJix' s force.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> Weak POV Bound Verb &quot;sinpai-suru&quot; (be anxious) used in (6) is of this type. This type of verb describes tile psychological state of the agent who takes a volitional action, primarily from the expected point of view, namely that agent. However that state can be observed by other people. As a result, it is possible to describe the agent's psychological state either from the expected current point of view or fi'om the outside observers.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> Strong POV Bound Verb &quot;kininaru&quot; (feel anxiety) used in (7), so called subjective adjectives, that express a psychological state~ like &quot;ureshi-i&quot;(be happy), &quot;kanashi-i&quot; (be sad}, &quot;X-wo-kanziru&quot; (feel X) where X is a noun which represents a certain psychological state, and so on are oJ this type. This type of predicate describes an agent's inner psychological state that cannot be observed by other people. As a result, they describe those states exclusively fi'om tile expected curdeg rent point of view, who is to be the agent of the action.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="10"> By combining this categorization and Principle 2 we can account for the discrepancy of preference among (6), (7) and (8) as following. null The preference of (8) has been already accounted for in this section, which actually uses the nature of POV Neutral Verb, &quot;au&quot;. 2The dill'create similar with that of between Weak a:nd Strong POV Bound predicates has already been observed in the context of antecedent binding through Japanese long distance reflexive 'zibun' hi terms of three notions, say, SOURCE, SELF and PIVOT by Iida and Sells \[3\]. Kinsui \[6\] proposes the framework that categorizes aapaalese verbs aatd subjective adjectives into the similar types as ours.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="11"> Ac'll~s DE COLING-92, NANTES, 23-28 AO~&quot; 1992 3 2 9 PROC. OF COLING-92, NANTES, Air6.23-28, 1992 Notice that due to the first sentence (5) the agent of volitional action &quot;oshie-te-morat&quot; (let her inform) is known to be Betty who should have the reason of the action in the situation described by the second sentence (6). By Principle 2 (6) describes Betty's experience that causes her volitional causative action &quot;oshie-te-morat?' As a result the antecedent of the zero subject is primarily Betty. However since verb &quot;sinpal-suru&quot;(be arudous) of (6) is Weak POV Hound, due to the effect of &quot;ita&quot;-suffix, it is also possible that non agent, in this case Alice, is the antecedent of the zero subject. Namely, by '~ita&quot;-suffix Alice's state of being anxious (&quot;sinpai suru') is known to be observed by the original agent Betty. Thus the intuitive preference is accounted for by the combination of Principle 2, &quot;sinpai-suru&quot; being Weak POV Bound, and the effect of &quot;ita&quot;-suffix. As described in the above ease, Betty is known to be the salient agent in the second sentence (7). However since the verb of (7) &quot;kininaru&quot; is Strong POV Bound, the zero subject is exclusively the expected point of view, namely the primarily supposed agent Betty even though the verb is &quot;ita'-snflixed. Thus we account for native's intuitive preference systematically.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="12"> Intrasentential cases are also accounted for in the same fashion as we did in the discourse cases. However we omit those due to the space limitation.</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="7" start_page="2" end_page="2" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 6 Conclusions </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> The centering algorithms already proposed account for much broader range of phenomena than our theory covers. However their algorithms themselves cannot account for certain types of phenomena, which we observe in reason-action type subordinated discourses, etc. These cases can be dealt with by Principle 2 and predicate categorization especially Strong and Weak POV Bound types as stated in the following principle.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> Principle 4 In the subordinated sentence or clause whose verb describes the ezperiencer's psychological state and is Weak PO V Bound, as .\[or the antecedent of zero pronoun, the non-experiencer expected by the force of &quot;ira&quot;suffixed verb and by Principle ~ can override the supposed experiencer. In eases of Strong PO V Bound this overriding does not happen.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> Incorporating with these principles, the already proposed centering theories could cover much wider zero anaphora phenomena.</Paragraph> </Section> class="xml-element"></Paper>