The interaction of pragmatics and predictability in sentence negation

A widely accepted view in psycholinguistics is that language comprehension occurs incrementally, with each word integrated into the listener's mental representation as it is encountered. However, substantial evidence suggests that negation may be an exception to this pattern. Studies suggest that comprehenders often first construct an affirmative representation of a sentence before later incorporating the negation. However, other research indicates that negation can be integrated immediately when supported by the pragmatic context. Yet, the factors enabling such rapid integration remain poorly understood - specifically, whether it arises from the discourse-pragmatic properties of negation, the predictability and interpretation of the negated word, or an interaction between these dimensions. This uncertainty may stem from the difficulty of disentangling these factors in experiments using natural language stimuli. Across three experiments, we used simple geometric shapes in a closed-set paradigm to systematically manipulate different sources of predictability while holding the discourse-pragmatic properties of negation constant. Our findings show that discourse-pragmatic effects can be distinguished from those driven by predictability. Moreover, these two factors jointly facilitate negation processing. These results are considered within current models of negation comprehension.