Processing of linguistic focus depends on contrastive alternatives

Abstract

Readers progressed through a sentence in the Maze task (Forster et al., 2009), deciding at each word between a sensical and a non-sensical continuation. Contexts presented before these sentences manipulated whether words were linguistically focused and whether they were given or new (Experiment 1); focused targets were read more slowly even when they were given, and new targets were read slowly in general. This both replicated earlier results in which slowdowns were found in the reading of focus (Benatar and Clifton, 2014; Birch and Rayner, 1997; Lowder and Gordon, 2015), and demonstrated that focus slowdowns are not reducible to newness. To clarify earlier results in which speed-ups were found on focused words (Birch and Rayner, 2010; Morris and Folk, 1998), contexts manipulated whether contrastive alternatives to focused words were presented with a focus particle (Experiment 2) or in a cleft construction (Experiment 3). Focused targets were read less slowly when a contrastive alternative was present in the context. This effect of contrastive alternatives cannot be reduced to simple semantic associate priming: Contexts also manipulated whether a semantically associated expression was present independently of the presence of a contrastive alternative (Experiment 4). Readers slowed down less when an alternative was present in the context, even when this alternative was not semantically associated to the target. These results indicate that the processing of focus depends on contrastive alternatives, in their interaction with newness, semantic association, and focus construction.