How to sneeze a napkin off the table: Understanding grammatically creative, coerced sentences in real time

While numerous studies have examined how speakers understand newly coined words and novel figurative expressions, it remains largely unknown how grammatically creative sentences are processed in real time. In two reading experiments, we investigated how speakers comprehend instances of valency coercion, where a verb combines with noncanonical grammatical arguments (e.g., Frank sneezed his napkin off the table). Experiment 1 (N = 80), which included a preregistered replication (N = 120), employed the "maze" variant of the self-paced reading task. We found that coerced sentences, compared with prototypical (uncreative) controls, produced immediate processing difficulty after the verb, which was, however, rapidly alleviated at the prepositional phrase. Experiment 2 (N = 55), using eye-movement recordings, showed that the processing difficulty in coerced sentences was more successfully resolved than in fully anomalous controls, and that this resolution occurred both at temporally early and later stages of processing. Our results demonstrate that verb argument structure composition is flexible and computed during real-time incremental sentence comprehension. Comprehenders understand creative verb-argument combinations by rapidly integrating information from the verb and its clausal context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).