Pronomial ambiguity: a matter of life and deathIn 1953 Derek Bentley was hung for the murder of a policeman, shot by his accomplice who had a gun. Bentley had no weapon.

Bentley and his accomplice were confronted by police during a burglary. As they were being arrested Bentley shouted to his friend “Let them have it”. This could mean “Pass the gun to the police” where it referred to the gun, or “Shoot them”, where it referred to the bullet. The judge and jury took the second interpretation, and convicted Bentley of accessory to murder. He later received a posthumous pardon. The younger boy who actually fired the lethal shot was not hung as he was under 18.

Pronomial ambiguity: a matter of life and deathIn 1953 Derek Bentley was hung for the murder of a policeman, shot by his accomplice who had a gun. Bentley had no weapon.

Bentley and his accomplice were confronted by police during a burglary. As they were being arrested Bentley shouted to his friend “Let them have it”. This could mean “Pass the gun to the police” where it referred to the gun, or “Shoot them”, where it referred to the bullet. The judge and jury took the second interpretation, and convicted Bentley of accessory to murder. He later received a posthumous pardon. The younger boy who actually fired the lethal shot was not hung as he was under 18.

EVOLANG 2014

Pronomial characteristics of an evolved language: Is brevity an evolutionary advantage?

The good tasting fish with pink flesh are coming up the stream: we should catch them

A 7-word phrase is replaced by one pronoun: them BUT Pronouns can have ambiguous referents: Jack told John he would be late AND Use of some pronouns increases cognitive load

Caroline Lyon, Joe Saunders and Chrystopher Nehaniv

Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Some types of pronounsType A - Direct reference: e.g. this, that, cognitive load in comprehension is no greater than for nominals

Type B – 1st person pronouns e.g. I, my, where reference changes with the speaker, a significant cognitive achievement

Type C – 3rd person pronouns e.g. he, it , anaphoric references whose processing can incur heavier cognitive load than nominals, and can be ambiguous

Cognitive load indicated by ERP measures [1,2,3]

Efficient communication is a balance between:Ease of production for speaker v perception for hearerEase of finding lexical expression for speaker v cognitive load in comprehension for hearer [4]

AND Facilitates triadic discourse: 2 humans can talk about a third object [5]

Evolution of pronouns - 1Did Type A pronouns evolve before or with word names?Deitic support (pointing to this or that) links them to pre-linguistic communication

Evolution of pronouns – 2Pronouns are typically shorter than the nominals they replace. They contribute to ease of production for speaker.

Brevity outweighs • heavier cognitive load incurred in comprehension of Type C pronouns with anaphoric reference• need for syntactic and / or semantic disambiguation • persisting ambiguity

Recent language developmentsNote prevalence of brief acronyms in texting and emailing:OMG, LOL, etc. Shorter to write, may not be shorter to say e.g. www

References[1] Leitao et al. 2009 “Pronoun Resolution to Commanders and Recessors: A view from Event-Realated Brain Potentials”, in LNAI 5847, Eds Devi, Branco ,Mitkov[2] Nieuwland and Berkum 2008 “The neurocognition of referential ambiguity in language comprehension” Language and Linguistic Compass, 2(4)[3] Poeppel and Omaki 2008 “Language acquisition and ERP approaches: prospects and challenges” in “Early Language Development “, Eds Friederici and Thierry[4] Piantadosi, Tily and Gibson 2012 “The communicative function of ambiguity in language” Cognition, Vol 122, [5] Hurford 2012 “The origins of meaning“ in “The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution” Eds Tallerman and Gibson

Pronouns are a defining characteristic of human languageWhy did they evolve? Why not stay with nominal phrases?