What, when, and how?: Questions of immediacy in anaphoric reference resolution

Abstract This paper considers the question of the immediacy of interpretation of anaphors. Two aspects of immediacy are considered: (1) immediacy in terms of the initiation of processes that might be considered as supporting resolution, and (2) immediacy in terms of achieving resolution as an outcome. The functional justification, and the logic of these aspects are considered. The bulk of the paper is a review of pertinent experimental evidence. On the basis of studies both on speech and reading comprehension, we argue that the evidence favours immediate initiation. However, it is argued that immediacy of outcome must take into account the variety of different forms of definite anaphora: proper names, full definite descriptions, and pronouns. Whereas there is good evidence for early resolution in the case of the first two, it does not hold for all cases of pronominal anaphora. Furthermore, evidence from a variety of stylistic phenomena indicate the need to disentangle carefully the semantic constraints in...