“Just‐Right” Is (Not) Always Right: Joint Effects of Typicality and Informativity During Real‐Time Sentence Processing

A growing body of empirical research shows that, for both affirmative and negative sentences, language processing is not only shaped by the ease of integrating linguistic input into world knowledge, but also by expectations of informative communication. Yet, it remains unclear how comprehenders coordinate pressures from both aspects during real-time sentence processing. We propose that language comprehension reflects a dynamic balance between world-knowledge typicality and communication informativeness, which is subject to contextual modulation. Two self-paced reading studies test this proposal by examining affirmative and negative sentences describing part-whole relations that vary in typicality and informativity in unmarked and unexpectedness-signaling contexts. Our results provide evidence for joint effects of typicality and informativity, with distinct patterns across sentence polarities and contexts.