Verb processing during sentence comprehension: Contextual impenetrability

This paper examines verb processing during sentence comprehension. We describe two experiments that assess the interaction between verb complexity and the structural information contained in a sentence. Verb complexity is defined in terms of a verb's possible argument structure arrangements—linguistic information arrayed against a verb's entry in the mental lexicon. Normal subjects had to perform a secondary task presented in the immediate vicinity of the verb while listening to a sentence for meaning. Reaction times to this secondary task show that all of a verb's possible argument structures are momentarily and exhaustively activated in the vicinity of the verb, even in sentences that are structurally biased toward one particular argument structure. We thus argue that verb processing in sentences involves a contextually impenetrable subcomponent of the language comprehension system.Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, Brandeis University.