Dra. Burdiles-Fernández, Gina

In discourse comprehension, if all goes well, people tend to create a rich and coherent mental representation of the events described in the text. To do so, referential and relational coherence must be established in order to construct a connected discourse. The objective of this follow-up eye-tracking study (N = 72) is to explore the existence of an interaction effect between two factors: (a) the extension of the referent (short and long antecedent), and (b) the semantic relation (counter-argumentative a pesar de, and causal por), when processing the neuter pronoun ello in texts written in Spanish. No previous study has systematically compared the on-line processing of texts in which different extensions of the encapsulated anaphoric antecedent by the neuter pronoun ello (‘this’ or ‘it’ in English) are presented in diverse marked semantic relations (causal and counter-argumentative). Based on three eye-tracking measures, we found distinctive patterns of reading behavior when anaphoric neuter reference and semantic relations must be processed conjointly in order to construct a coherent mental representation. The main findings show that reading longer and more complex antecedents encapsulated by the neutral pronouns ello exerts more cognitive effort in late processing (Look Back measure), particularly when simultaneously and in the same discourse construction there is an explicitly marked counterargumentative semantic relation. Implications for theories of referential and relational coherence are discussed.

It has always been in the public interest to know the reading habits of readers of various ages and levels of schooling, as well as their opinions with regard to the consumption of reading materials. Lately, researchers have given increased attention to digital texts. Although progress on these topics has been made as reported in published research, there is yet incomplete information regarding readers’ habits and opinions at university and professional levels. This study describes the self-reported habits of university students belonging to two disciplinary domains (Human Sciences and Economic and Business Sciences) regarding reading on paper or on digital media for three purposes: academic, entertainment, and information seeking. The results reveal that the readers’ preferences vary according to the three purposes. These readers reported using different media but had a clear preference for paper; they also reported distinguishing between cognitive processes (memory, comprehension, and learning), with the discipline to which they belonged having no radical effect on their preferences. All of this leads us to conclude that currently there exists a generation in transition, a ‘Gutenberg-Google’ generation, which still recognizes the relevance of paper, in particular for academic purposes.

En este estudio, se describe el funcionamiento de los procesos de encapsulación realizados por los pronombres demostrativos neutros 'esto', 'eso' y 'aquello' en el discurso de la economía (8.044 casos). Los objetivos específicos de este estudio son, en primer lugar, identificar la frecuencia de ocurrencia de los tres pronombres en función de encapsulador; en segundo término, determinar la extensión de los referentes encapsulados y su ubicación textual en relación con cada uno de los pronombres en estudio; por último, se determina el contexto semántico en que operan los pronombres examinados. El corpus de análisis estuvo conformado por treinta y ocho manuales de economía provenientes del Corpus PUCV-UCSC-2017 (8,5 millones de palabras). Los principales resultados indican que el pronombre 'esto' es el de mayor frecuencia en el corpus y, a su vez, el más empleado con función encapsuladora. Los otros dos pronombres revelan –en comparación– una ocurrencia muy escasa. Se observa, además, que la Cláusula y el Complejo Clausular son los referentes encapsulados con más alta ocurrencia y que, al mismo tiempo, su funcionamiento es mayoritariamente de tipo anafórico. En cuanto al contexto semántico, el tipo de relación más frecuente es la de causalidad. Los hallazgos más sobresalientes son la orientación referencial bidireccional de los pronombres en estudio y la identificación de antecedentes de tipo multisemiótico, es decir, no únicamente verbales (i.e. gráficos, esquemas, fórmulas).

Eye movements constitute an important cue to understanding how readers connect textual information, particularly when an encapsulator pronoun must be anaphorically resolved in order to construct a coherent mental representation of the text being read. While existing research into anaphoric reference has predominantly focused on the distance between pronouns and referents and on their morphosyntactic features, no previously published studies have addressed the effect in causal contexts of varying extensions of the referent being encapsulated by a neuter pronoun. In the present research, we help fill this gap by studying the effects of online processing of the anaphoric neuter Spanish pronoun ello (‘this’ in English) in causally-related texts using two varying referent extensions: short and long antecedent. A one factor repeated measures design was implemented. The results of three eye reading measures showed a fine-grained picture of encapsulation processes for seventy-two Chilean university students as they each read twelve texts. On the one hand, the reading times for processing the neuter pronoun ello AOI did not show statistically significant differences between the short and long conditions. On the other, the findings indicate that, in constructing referential and relational coherence in causally-related texts in Spanish, resolution of the neuter pronoun is in fact influenced by the extension of the referent.

En este artículo se estudia el pronombre neutro ello como mecanismos de encapsulación en un corpus de textos escritos pertenecientes a cuatro géneros del discurso académico de la Economía (Corpus PUCV-UCSC-2013). En esta investigación se busca: a) identificar los tipos de referente anafórico encapsulado por el pronombre ello y b) determinar los tipos de relación de coherencia semántica en la que opera el pronombre encapsulador ello. El corpus de análisis está conformado por 152 textos escritos: 14 Artículos de Investigación, 55 Guías de Ejercicios, 45 Informes de Política Monetaria y 38 Manuales. Los principales resultados indican que se identificaron 3.124 apariciones del pronombre encapsulador en el corpus. Los análisis específicos revelan que, por un lado, el Complejo Clausular es ―en promedio― el referente anafórico encapsulado con más alta frecuencia de ocurrencia y, por otro, que el tipo de relación semántica más frecuente es la de causalidad. En cuanto a los géneros discursivos, el encapsulador no registra ocurrencias en la Guía de Ejercicios y se comprueba cierta variación de los tipos de relaciones de coherencia a través de los otros tres géneros.