The role of scenario mapping in text comprehension

Abstract

We argue that different theories of text comprehension give the use of world knowledge different degrees of importance. Although all acknowledge it as a major feature of comprehension, just when and how it is utilized appears to split theories into those that are based on propositions as building blocks and those that are not. We argue for an account that does not rely on the proposition as an early building block, the scenario‐mapping and focus account, based on Sanford and Garrod's (1981) earlier work. We argue that interpretation at a pre‐ and subpropositional level is both an empirical fact and a theoretical necessity and that the primary task of the language processor is to map language input at a (largely) subpropositional level onto background knowledge. We illustrate the utility of the approach with a discussion of the representation of plurals and quantified statements. Although some of our claims are consistent with both the construction‐integration account and minimalism, we argue that the core process of scenario mapping is essentially absent from these other formulations.