Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part B (2024)

This paper investigates the processing complexity of pronominal binding in Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language with distinctive syntactic and morphological features. The study builds upon Chomsky’s Binding Theory, which delineates principles governing the relationships between pronouns and their antecedents. While extensive research in other languages has examined how native speakers process sentences adhering to or violating these principles, little work has been done in the context of Assamese. This study addresses this gap by exploring the ambiguous nature of pronominal references in Assamese and testing the hypothesis that when the case assignment aligns between the Genitive head and the pronominal, readers solve this ambiguity in favor of the Genitive Head.
Using a combination of self-paced reading and judgment tasks, the study involved 12 native Assamese speakers. Participants were presented with sentences containing either pronouns or reflexives and were asked to determine the antecedent of the pronominal. The results indicated no significant reading time differences leading up to the pronominal. However, reading times were significantly higher in the post-critical region for sentences containing pronouns. In the judgment task, participants showed higher accuracy in selecting the antecedent for reflexives, confirming their unambiguous nature. For sentences with pronouns, 67% of participants identified the Genitive head as the antecedent, supporting the hypothesis.
The findings suggest that Assamese speakers mostly interpret ambiguous pronominals as referring to the Genitive head, reflecting an interaction between syntactic and pragmatic factors during sentence processing. This study contributes to a broader understanding of Binding Theory in less commonly studied languages and highlights the adaptability of the human parsing mechanism in integrating multiple sources of information. Future research should delve deeper into the reasoning behind the selection of Genitive heads and investigate gender neutrality and mismatches in binding, which were also observed in the study.
The results have significant implications for linguistic theory, suggesting that while Binding Theory provides a robust framework, it must account for language-specific variations and the influence of context and pragmatic cues on sentence processing. This study underscores the need for a more nuanced approach that considers the dynamic interplay of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in shaping language comprehension.