Context-driven expectations about focus alternatives.

What is conveyed by a sentence frequently depends not only on the descriptive content carried by its words, but also on implicit alternatives determined by the context of use. Four visual world eye-tracking experiments examined how alternatives are generated based on aspects of the discourse context and used in interpreting sentences containing the focus operators only and also. Experiment 1 builds on previous reading time studies showing that the interpretations of only sentences are constrained by alternatives explicitly mentioned in the preceding discourse, providing fine-grained time course information about the expectations triggered by only. Experiments 2 and 3 show that, in the absence of explicitly mentioned alternatives, lexical and situation-based categories evoked by the context are possible sources of alternatives. While Experiments 1-3 all demonstrate the discourse dependence of alternatives, only explicit mention triggered expectations about alternatives that were specific to sentences with only. By comparing only with also, Experiment 4 begins to disentangle expectations linked to the meanings of specific operators from those generalizable to the class of focus-sensitive operators. Together, these findings show that the interpretation of sentences with focus operators draws on both dedicated mechanisms for introducing alternatives into the discourse context and general mechanisms associated with discourse processing.

Anticipatory Deaccenting in Language Comprehension.

We evaluated the hypothesis that listeners can generate expectations about upcoming input using anticipatory deaccenting, in which the absence of a nuclear pitch accent on an utterance-new noun is licensed by the subsequent repetition of that noun (e.g. Drag the SQUARE with the house to the TRIangle with the house). The phonemic restoration paradigm was modified to obscure word-initial segmental information uniquely identifying the final word in a spoken instruction, resulting in a stimulus compatible with two lexical alternatives (e.g. mouse/house). In Experiment 1, we measured participants' final interpretations and response times. Experiment 2 used the same materials in a crowd-sourced gating study. Sentence interpretations at gated intervals, final interpretations, and response times provided converging evidence that the anticipatory deaccenting pattern contributed to listeners' referential expectations. The results illustrate the availability and importance of sentence-level accent patterns in spoken language comprehension.

Interpreting prosodic cues in discourse context.

Two visual-world experiments investigated whether and how quickly discourse-based expectations about the prosodic realization of spoken words modulate interpretation of acoustic-prosodic cues. Experiment 1 replicated effects of segmental lengthening on activation of onset-embedded words (e.g. pumpkin) using resynthetic manipulation of duration and fundamental frequency (F0). In Experiment 2, the same materials were preceded by instructions establishing information-structural differences between competing lexical alternatives (i.e. repeated vs. newly-assigned thematic roles) in critical instructions. Eye-movements generated upon hearing the critical target word revealed a significant interaction between information structure and target-word realization: Segmental lengthening and pitch excursion elicited more fixations to the onset-embedded competitor when the target word remained in the same thematic role, but not when its thematic role changed. These results suggest that information structure modulates the interpretation of acoustic-prosodic cues by influencing expectations about fine-grained acoustic-phonetic properties of the unfolding utterance.

Asking or Telling--Real-time Processing of Prosodically Distinguished Questions and Statements.

We introduce a targeted language game approach using the visual world, eye-movement paradigm to assess when and how certain intonational contours affect the interpretation of utterances. We created a computer-based card game in which elliptical utterances such as "Got a candy" occurred with a nuclear contour most consistent with a yes-no question (H* H-H%) or a statement (L* L-L%). In Experiment I we explored how such contours are integrated online. In Experiment 2 we studied the expectations listeners have for how intonational contours signal intentions: do these reflect linguistic categories or rapid adaptation to the paradigm? Prosody had an immediate effect on interpretation, as indexed by the pattern and timing of fixations. Moreover, the association between different contours and intentions was quite robust in the absence of clear syntactic cues to sentence type, and was not due to rapid adaptation. Prosody had immediate effects on interpretation even though there was a construction-based bias to interpret "got a" as a question. Taken together, we believe this paradigm will provide further insights into how intonational contours and their phonetic realization interact with other cues to sentence type in online comprehension.

Resolving ambiguity: a psycholinguistic approach to understanding prosody processing in high-functioning autism.

Individuals with autism exhibit significant impairments in prosody production, yet there is a paucity of research on prosody comprehension in this population. The current study adapted a psycholinguistic paradigm to examine whether individuals with autism are able to use prosody to resolve syntactically ambiguous sentences. Participants were 21 adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA), and 22 typically developing controls matched on age, IQ, receptive language, and gender. The HFA group was significantly less likely to use prosody to disambiguate syntax, but scored comparably to controls when syntax alone or both prosody and syntax indicated the correct response. These findings indicate that adolescents with HFA have difficulty using prosody to disambiguate syntax in comparison to typically developing controls, even when matched on chronological age, IQ, and receptive language. The implications of these findings for how individuals with autism process language are discussed.

Addressees distinguish shared from private information when interpreting questions during interactive conversation.

Two experiments examined the role of common ground in the production and on-line interpretation of wh-questions such as What's above the cow with shoes? Experiment 1 examined unscripted conversation, and found that speakers consistently use wh-questions to inquire about information known only to the addressee. Addressees were sensitive to this tendency, and quickly directed attention toward private entities when interpreting these questions. A second experiment replicated the interpretation findings in a more constrained setting. These results add to previous evidence that the common ground influences initial language processes, and suggests that the strength and polarity of common ground effects may depend on contributions of sentence type as well as the interactivity of the situation.

Interpreting Pitch Accents in Online Comprehension: H* vs. L+H*.

Although the presence or absence of a pitch accent clearly can play an important role in signaling the discourse and information structure of an utterance, whether the form of an accent determines the type of information it conveys is more controversial. We used an eye-tracking paradigm to investigate whether H*, which has been argued to signal new information, evokes different eye fixations than L+H*, which has been argued to signal the presence of contrast. Our results demonstrate that although listeners interpret these accents differently, their interpretive domains overlap. L+H* creates a strong bias toward contrast referents whereas H* is compatible with both new and contrast referents.