INFLUENCE OF CONNECTIVES ON LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION - EYE-TRACKING EVIDENCE FOR INCREMENTAL INTERPRETATION

An eye-tracking experiment investigated whether incremental interpreta tion applies to interclausal relationships. According to Millis and Ju st's (1994) delayed-integration hypothesis, interclausal relationships are not computed until the end of the second clause, because the proc essor needs to have two full propositions before integration can occur . We investigated the processing of causal and diagnostic sentences (S weetser, 1990; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982) that contained the connective because. Previous research (Traxler, Sanford, Aked, & Moxey, 1997) ha s demonstrated that readers have greater difficulty processing diagnos tic sentences than causal sentences. Our results indicated that diffic ulty processing diagnostic sentences occurred well before the end of t he second clause. Thus comprehenders appear to compute interclausal re lationships incrementally.