To bind or not to bind: Individual differences in pronominal processing among adolescent Mandarin-English heritage speakers

Abstract

This study examines how late adolescent Mandarin-English heritage speakers (HSs) process different types of Mandarin pronouns in real time and how individual differences in cognitive and experiential factors modulate this process. Using a web-based visual world eye-tracking paradigm, we tested the interpretation of pronominals ( ta ), simplex reflexives ( ziji ), and complex reflexives ( taziji ), which differ in their reliance on narrow syntax versus syntax-discourse-semantic integration. At the group level, taziji was interpreted locally, while ziji and ta were interpreted as referring to long-distance (LD) antecedents. Working memory and inhibition modulated the processing of ziji and ta , whereas only current heritage language (HL) exposure influenced the processing of taziji. These findings indicate that domain-general cognitive resources are recruited during the resolution of pronouns involving LD and interface-level dependencies, while narrow syntactic structures are more sensitive to variation in language exposure. The results point to structural asymmetries in how cognitive and experiential factors affect real-time HL pronoun resolution.