The research in this lab focuses on the mental representations and processing mechanisms involved in the comprehension of sentences and discourses.

A primary goal in understanding a sentence is figuring out the who-did-what-to whom information that it conveys. However, there are many possible sources for this sort of information. The questions we are currently engaged in answering are:

(1) What sources of event participant information do readers and hearers use in understanding a sentence?

(2) When is event participant information used in developing structural and semantic representations for sentences and discourses?

(3) How much participant information is lexically encoded?

(4) What is the discourse status of unexpressed participant information and how is it used in anaphora resolution?

To address questions 1-2, we have been examining how and when people interpret schematic event participant information in sentences where this information is not explicitly expressed, and in sentences whose verbs differ in whether they semantically require or merely permit particular participants. To address question 3, we are constructing a near exhaustive survey of the participant properties of English verb system to determine which participants are semantically obligatory for verbs (i.e., arguments) and which are not. We are confirming these survey results with on-line comprehension studies. To address question 4, we are examining the resolution of anaphoric expressions whose antecedents are introduced as unexpressed participants.