Gender interference in processing Chinese compound reflexive: evidence from reading eye-tracking

In Chinese, the compound reflexive ta-ziji (“him/her-self”) has the gender marking pronoun ta, hence presenting a good test case for interference effects from structurally illicit antecedents predicted by cue-based retrieval models. Using reading eye-tracking, we manipulated the gender of ta-ziji that (mis)matches that of matrix- and local-subject. Results showed no interference whatsoever when ta-ziji matched local subjects. Only when ta-ziji mismatched local subjects did we find an inhibitory interference on first fixation duration and gaze duration at the verb immediately preceding ta-ziji, but a facilitatory interference on gaze duration at ta-ziji. Furthermore, at ta-ziji, total reading times were longer for gender-mismatching local subjects than for gender-matching ones. These findings are partially predicted by the standard cue-based retrieval model, but are mostly consistent with the structure-favoring cue-based retrieval model, suggesting that the structural cue plays a dominant role in the antecedent retrieval process, with interference occurring only in highly constrained situations.