Constructing focus alternatives from context and the limits of semantic priming

Authors

  • Christian Muxica UCLA
  • Jesse Harris UCLA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/elm.3.5812

Keywords:

Focus, Alternatives, sentence processing, Probe recognition

Abstract

Interpreting focus requires a comprehender to identify the set of alternatives intended by the speaker. Previous psycholinguistic research has characterized this process in terms of a two-stage model that initially forms an alternative set via the context-insensitive mechanism of semantic priming (Gotzner et al. 2016, Husband & Ferreira 2016). We have instead advanced a one-stage immediate-access model, in which alternatives are immediately constructed from the discourse context (Muxica & Harris to appear). In two cross-modal probe recognition task experiments, we further test our prediction that the discourse context strongly influences response speed at early moments of focus interpretation. The results are interpreted as uniquely supporting the immediate-access model.

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Published

2025-01-24

Issue

Section

Articles