We present four experiments on the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in picture noun phrases with and without possessors (e.g. Andrew's picture of him/himself, the picture of him/himself). The experiments (two off-line studies and two visual-world eye-tracking experiments) investigate how syntactic and semantic factors guide the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives and how different kinds of information are integrated during real-time reference resolution. The results show that the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in picture NP constructions is sensitive not only to purely structural information, as is commonly assumed in syntactically-oriented theories of anaphor resolution, but also to semantic information (see Kuno, 1987;Tenny, 2003). Moreover, the results show that pronouns and reflexives differ in the degree of sensitivity they exhibit to different kinds of information. This finding indicates that the form-specific multiple-constraints approach (see Kaiser, 2003;Kaiser, 2005;Kaiser & Trueswell, 2008;Brown-Schmidt, Byron & Tanenhaus, 2005), which states that referential forms can exhibit asymmetrical sensitivities to the different constraints guiding reference resolution, also applies in the within-sentence domain.

This paper lays the foundations for a processing model of relative acceptability levels in verb phrase ellipsis (VPE). In the proposed model, mismatching VPE examples are grammatical but less acceptable because they violate heuristic parsing strategies. This analysis is presented in a Minimalist Grammar formalism that is compatible with standard parsing techniques. The overall proposal integrates computational assumptions about parsing with a psycholinguistic linking hypothesis. These parts work together with the syntactic analysis to derive novel predictions that are confirmed in a controlled experiment.

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Binding theory (e.g., Chomsky, 1981) has played a central role in both syntactic theory and models of language processing. Its constraints are designed to predict that the referential domains of pronouns and reflexives are nonoverlapping, that is, are complementary; these constraints are also thought to play a role in online reference resolution. The predictions of binding theory and its role in sentence processing were tested in four experiments that monitored participants' eye movements as they followed spoken instructions to have a doll touch a picture belonging to another doll. The instructions used pronouns and reflexives embedded in picture noun phrases (PNPs) containing possessor phrases (e.g., Pick up Ken. Have Ken touch Harry's picture of himself). Although the interpretations assigned to pronouns were generally consistent with binding theory, reflexives were frequently assigned interpretations that violated binding theory. In addition, the timing and pattern of eye movements were inconsistent with models of language processing that assume that binding theory acts as an early filter to restrict the referential domain. The interpretations assigned to reflexives in PNPs with possessors suggest that they are binding-theory-exempt logophors, a conclusion that unifies the treatment of reflexives in PNPs.

What is conveyed by a sentence frequently depends not only on the descriptive content carried by its words, but also on implicit alternatives determined by the context of use. Four visual world eye-tracking experiments examined how alternatives are generated based on aspects of the discourse context and used in interpreting sentences containing the focus operators only and also. Experiment 1 builds on previous reading time studies showing that the interpretations of only sentences are constrained by alternatives explicitly mentioned in the preceding discourse, providing fine-grained time course information about the expectations triggered by only. Experiments 2 and 3 show that, in the absence of explicitly mentioned alternatives, lexical and situation-based categories evoked by the context are possible sources of alternatives. While Experiments 1-3 all demonstrate the discourse dependence of alternatives, only explicit mention triggered expectations about alternatives that were specific to sentences with only. By comparing only with also, Experiment 4 begins to disentangle expectations linked to the meanings of specific operators from those generalizable to the class of focus-sensitive operators. Together, these findings show that the interpretation of sentences with focus operators draws on both dedicated mechanisms for introducing alternatives into the discourse context and general mechanisms associated with discourse processing.