Fill the gap! Combining pragmatic and prosodic information to make gapping easy
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 24, 2026

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies
Published on: May 9, 2019
John C J Hoeks1, Gisela Redeker, Petra Hendriks
1Center for Language and Cognition Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. j.c.j.hoeks@rug.nl
Abstract:
Two studies investigated the effects of prosody and pragmatic context on off-line and on-line processing of sentences like John greeted Paul yesterday and Ben today. Such sentences are ambiguous between the so-called 'nongapping' reading, where John greeted Ben, and the highly unpreferred 'gapping' reading, where Ben greeted Paul. In the first experiment, participants listened to dialogues and gave a speeded response as to which reading of an ambiguous target sentence first comes to mind. In the second experiment, they also responded to a visual probe that was presented during the presentation of the ambiguous target. The results show that context and prosody have independent and strong effects on both on-line processing and off-line interpretation of gapping; in the right combination they can make gapping as easy as the normally preferred nongapping reading.
More Related Videos
09:27Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language
Published on: October 13, 2018
09:09Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
Related Concept Videos
Elaborative Rehearsals
The effectiveness of...
Gap Junctions
Gap Junctions
The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic
Spanning Openings in Brick Walls
Lintels are primary supports used to span openings and can be crafted from materials such as reinforced concrete, steel-reinforced brick masonry, or simple steel angles. These are straightforward to install and are typically concealed...
Chunking and Rehearsal in Sensory Memory