Lexical representations in spoken language comprehension

Abstract This study investigates the timing with which lexical representations are deployed at different levels of the language system, contrasting linguistic aspects of verb argument frames with their consequences for interpretation in the domain of non-linguistic, conceptual models. The experiment examined monitoring latencies to noun targets that were either normal with respect to the preceding verb, or which violated either pragmatic, semantic, or categorial constraints imposed by the verb's argument frame and its associated co-occurrence restrictions. The results show that syntactic and semantic constraints derived from the verb have immediate effects on processing, and that there is also a very rapid projection of the thematic properties of verb argument frames on to non-linguistic domains of interpretation and inference, involving the listener's mental model of the discourse.