When is cataphoric reference recognised?

Pronouns typically have explicit antecedents in the prior discourse otherwise processing difficulty is experienced. However, it has been argued [Gordon, P. C., & Hendrick, R. (1997). Intuitive knowledge of linguistic co-reference. Cognition, 62, 325–370; Gordon, P. C., & Hendrick, R. (1998). The representation and processing of co-reference in discourse. Cognitive Science, 22, 389–424] that when a pronoun appears in a preposed subordinate clause (as in, Before she began to sing, Susan stood up), incremental interpretation is suspended and no antecedent is immediately sought, since the pronoun cannot be resolved until the main clause is encountered. We report results from an eye-tracking study showing that on encountering a pronoun that has no prior antecedent (compared to cases where there is an explicit prior antecedent), readers experience immediate difficulty whether or not the pronoun appears in a preposed subordinate clause, suggesting that attempted incremental interpretation is not suspended in these cases.