The role of subordinating conjunctions in the interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in native Peninsular Spanish

Abstract Subject pronoun interpretation in native Spanish has generally been approached under the Position of Antecedent Strategy, a parsing strategy which claims that null pronouns bias toward subject antecedents and overt pronouns toward object antecedents. While some studies align with the predicted patterns, others present mixed evidence. To further clarify this, our study tests the offline interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in 55 native Peninsular Spanish speakers. We additionally tested the role played by different temporal subordinating conjunctions ( mientras “while” vs. cuando “when”) in modulating subject pronoun interpretation preferences. Our findings reveal that overt pronouns bias toward object antecedents independently from the subordinating conjunction. Conversely, null pronouns bias toward subject antecedents, but their interpretation is influenced by the type of subordinating conjunction, with higher rates of subject interpretations in the mientras “while” condition. These results lend support to theoretical accounts such as the Form-Specific Multiple-Constraints approach, which asserts that referring expressions are subject to different constraints and to varying degrees. These findings thus extend beyond purely structural accounts and underscore the complexity of subject pronoun interpretation in Spanish.