Abstract
Complement coercion (begin a book →reading) involves a type clash between an event-selecting verb and an entity-denoting object, triggering a covert event (reading). Two main factors involved in complement coercion have been investigated: the semantic type of the object (event vs. entity), and the typicality of the covert event (the author began a book →writing). In previous research, reading times have been measured at the object. However, the influence of the typicality of the subject–object combination on processing an aspectual verb such as begin has not been studied. Using a self-paced reading study, we manipulated semantic type and subject–object typicality, exploiting German word order to measure reading times at the aspectual verb. These variables interacted at the target verb. We conclude that both type and typicality probabilistically guide expectations about upcoming input. These results are compatible with an expectation-based view of complement coercion and language comprehension more generally in which there is rapid interaction between what is typically viewed as linguistic knowledge, and what is typically viewed as domain general knowledge about how the world works.
Highlights
In many theories of language processing, a comprehender’s expectations regarding upcoming input play a major role (Altmann and Mirkovic, 2009; Kuperberg and Jaeger, 2016)
Expectations typically are triggered by multiple representational domains at different levels, and the integration of information across domains. These include information such as general semantic types that are required by a predicate for its arguments (Jackendoff, 1997), and world knowledge about specific events and the participants involved in those events (Bicknell et al, 2010)
The specific contributions of these types of information and their interplay remain open questions. We explore these issues from the vantage point of a particular and yet central phenomenon in sentence processing, complement coercion
Summary
In many theories of language processing, a comprehender’s expectations regarding upcoming input play a major role (Altmann and Mirkovic, 2009; Kuperberg and Jaeger, 2016) In these theories, expectations typically are triggered by multiple representational domains at different levels, and the integration of information across domains. When reading a sentence like The customer finished her burger, people understand that a customer finished doing something with her burger, and that she probably finished eating it Such constructions are examples of complement coercion, logical metonymy, or enriched composition (Pustejovsky, 1995; Jackendoff, 1997). The meaning of the object is coerced into a predicate (burger is extended to mean eating the burger)
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