Incremental processing of Tense Harmony and the disambiguation of clefted Relatives.

We examine the processing of Tense Harmony, a semantic constraint requiring temporal compatibility between matrix and embedded clauses in English it-clefts (It was the gardener that was calling/*will call). Critically, Tense Harmony applies to Connected Clauses but not to string-identical clefted Re...

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Publicado en:Language, Cognition & Neuroscience Vol. 41; no. 7; pp. 959 - 972
Autores principales: Guo, Buhan, Santi, Andrea, Sloggett, Shayne, Turco, Giuseppina, Mattys, Sven, Grillo, Nino
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Sep2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Sep2026
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      pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd
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        10.1080/23273798.2026.2680023
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        atl: Incremental processing of Tense Harmony and the disambiguation of clefted Relatives.
      aug:
        au:
          Guo, Buhan
          Santi, Andrea
          Sloggett, Shayne
          Turco, Giuseppina
          Mattys, Sven
          Grillo, Nino
        affil: Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, York, UK
      sug:
        subj:
          Psycholinguistics
          Language Processing
          Semantics
          English Language
          Grammar
          Human
          Experimental Studies
          Male
          Female
          Adult
          Middle Age
          Funding Source
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Reading
          Judgment
          Comparative Studies
          Reaction Time
          Adult: 19-44 years
          Middle Aged: 45-64 years
          Male
          Female
      ab: We examine the processing of Tense Harmony, a semantic constraint requiring temporal compatibility between matrix and embedded clauses in English it-clefts (It was the gardener that was calling/*will call). Critically, Tense Harmony applies to Connected Clauses but not to string-identical clefted Relative Clauses. An acceptability judgment task shows that Tense Harmony violations receive significantly lower ratings and slower judgments compared to simple tense mismatches, despite being fully grammatical as a Relative Clause. A Grammatical Maze experiment reveals increased reading latencies immediately at the disambiguating region for these violations. Results demonstrate that Tense Harmony is computed incrementally, that clefted Relatives elicit garden-path effects, and that semantic constraints guide structural expectations. These findings support hybrid models of sentence processing incorporating not only retrieval but also predictive mechanisms in dependency formation, extending our understanding of how semantic and structural information interact in real-time sentence processing.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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