ABSTRACT
A great deal of experimental evidence supports the intuition that language comprehension takes place immediately and incrementally. For example, listeners can shadow speech (repeat auditory language input) with a latency of as little as 250 ms (Marslen-Wilson, 1973). Unambiguous words are often recognized before the spoken input is even complete (Marslen-Wilson & Welsh, 1978). Given this immediacy of comprehension, combined with the many local indeterminacies in natural language, it is clear that at least partial commitments are being made to certain interpretations before completely disambiguating information is available. What sources of information do readers and listeners use when making these early commitments?
The actress selected a blue dress.
The actress selected by the director quit.
