A growing body of empirical research shows that, for both affirmative and negative sentences, language processing is not only shaped by the ease of integrating linguistic input into world knowledge, but also by expectations of informative communication. Yet, it remains unclear how comprehenders coordinate pressures from both aspects during real-time sentence processing. We propose that language comprehension reflects a dynamic balance between world-knowledge typicality and communication informativeness, which is subject to contextual modulation. Two self-paced reading studies test this proposal by examining affirmative and negative sentences describing part-whole relations that vary in typicality and informativity in unmarked and unexpectedness-signaling contexts. Our results provide evidence for joint effects of typicality and informativity, with distinct patterns across sentence polarities and contexts.

When a person reads or hears a sentence, what kind of visuospatial representation do they construct? Prior work has proposed a Spatial Agency Bias, according to which people conceptualize events with a left-to-right trajectory, with the left side associated with agency (at least in languages using left-to-right scripts). However, researchers disagree on the source and robustness of the Spatial Agency Bias. We suggest that a key obstacle stems from insufficient testing of how agentivity relates to other concepts. We report two experiments manipulating voice, thematic role and word order. Our results point to a general Prominence Bias: Factors that make entities more prominent/salient favor left-side placement.

Depression and suicidality are associated with systematic alterations in cognitive and emotional processing, yet the spatiotemporal neural dynamics underlying these changes during affective task engagement remain poorly characterized. We investigate the time-resolved neural representations of affective semantic processing using multivariate decoding of 64-channel electroencephalography (EEG), while participants (N = 137) perform Sentence Evaluation task using emotionally salient, self-referential statements. Reliable condition-dependent neural discriminability emerges with peak decoding accuracy between 300-600 ms, a time window corresponding to affective semantic evaluation, contextual updating processes, and conflict monitoring. Relative to healthy controls, individuals with depression and suicidal ideation show earlier onset, longer duration, and greater amplitude decoding responses, along with broader cross-temporal generalization and enhanced contributions from frontocentral and parietotemporal components. These results indicate systematic group-level differences in the spatiotemporal dynamics and stability of neural representations during emotionally salient semantic evaluation, contributing to a characterization of neurocognitive processes associated with depression and suicidality.

The present study examines how real-world event knowledge and grammatical aspect guide event comprehension. Specifically, we tested whether real-world knowledge about the likelihood of state-change (e.g., wine glasses usually crack when dropped but plastic cups do not) modulates the object state representations that people construct while reading perfective and imperfective sentences. Participants read “rebus” sentences in perfective and imperfective aspect, presented one word at a time, self-paced. In each sentence, the object was replaced by an image of the object that is either likely or unlikely to undergo state-change (e.g., Carlos was dropping/dropped a *wine glass*/*plastic cup* … ), depicted in their initial (intact) or end (changed) states. Reaction times to images indicate that real-world knowledge about the likelihood of state-change is recruited when comprehenders construct mental models of events described as completed ( perfective aspect, e.g., dropped ) as well as events described as ongoing ( imperfective aspect, e.g., was dropping ). Results also indicate that perfective aspect increases the accessibility of both the initial and end states of objects, compared to imperfective aspect. Overall, these results demonstrate that both non-linguistic information grounded in real-world event knowledge as well as linguistic cues about the temporal structure of events guide how comprehenders dynamically update mental representations of object states in real-time.

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a highly prevalent mental health condition, and a deeper understanding of its neurocognitive foundations is essential for identifying how core functions such as emotional and self-referential processing are affected. We investigate how depression symptoms alters the temporal dynamics of emotional processing by measuring neural responses to self-referential affective sentences using surface electroencephalography (EEG) in healthy and depressed individuals. Our results reveal significant group-level differences in neural activity during sentence viewing, suggesting disrupted integration of emotional and self-referential information in depression. Deep learning model trained on these responses achieves an area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) of 0.72 in distinguishing healthy from depressed participants, and 0.65 in differentiating depressed subgroups with and without suicidal ideation symptoms. Spatial ablations highlight anterior electrodes associated with semantic and affective processing as key contributors. These findings suggest stable, stimulus-driven neural signatures of depression symptoms that may inform future screening tools.

Depression and suicidality profoundly impact cognition and emotion, yet objective neurophysiological biomarkers remain elusive. We investigated the spatiotemporal neural dynamics underlying affective semantic processing in individuals with varying levels of clinical severity of depression and suicidality using multivariate decoding of electroencephalography (EEG) data. Participants (N=137) completed a sentence evaluation task involving emotionally charged self-referential statements while EEG was recorded. We identified robust, neural signatures of semantic processing, with peak decoding accuracy between 300-600 ms - a window associated with automatic semantic evaluation and conflict monitoring. Compared to healthy controls, individuals with depression and suicidality showed earlier onset, longer duration, and greater amplitude decoding responses, along with broader cross-temporal generalization and increased activation of frontocentral and parietotemporal components. These findings suggest altered sensitivity and impaired disengagement from emotionally salient content in the clinical groups, advancing our understanding of the neurocognitive basis of mental health and providing a principled basis for developing reliable EEG-based biomarkers of depression and suicidality.

This paper addresses underexplored questions about referential structure impacting pronoun interpretation in multiple-pronoun and single-pronoun contexts: whether and how referential structure effects in pronoun resolution interact with information-structural factors such as topicality and focus. Regarding referential structure effects, it has been argued that demoting a higher-salience referent, which is a subject antecedent, to a lower-salience object position leads to less coherent transitions, resulting in different pronoun interpretation patterns by referential structure type. To investigate whether and how information structure interacts with referential structure effects, we disentangle information structure from subjecthood. We use a picture-writing task, where we manipulated referential structure (One-Pronoun vs. Two-Pronoun sentences) and information structure (Subject-Topic/Object-Focus vs. Subject-Focus/Object-Topic) in a dialogue setup. The results replicate previously observed referential structure effects on pronoun interpretation. Crucially, we find that both subjecthood and information structure affect these effects, but demoting a subject-focus antecedent is more dispreferred than demoting a subject-topic antecedent. We discuss how our results contribute to providing evidence of information structure contributing to referential structure effects in multiple-pronoun contexts, which have been largely overlooked in most prior work on pronoun interpretation.

This paper discusses two approximative suffixal morphemes in Finnish, -hkO and -VhtAvA which, at first glance, both seem to resemble English -ish. However, I show that these two suffixes differ systematically in their distribution and semantics, and operate on different kinds of scales. I propose that -hkO, which attaches to gradable adjectives, signals proximity to a standard on a gradable scale provided by the adjective that -hkO modifies. In contrast, I claim that -VhtAvA, which attaches to nouns, signals proximity to a prototypical/canonical denotation of the noun that -VhtAvA modifies. Thus, the two approximative degree morphemes in Finnish wear their scale structure on their sleeve, so to speak. Evidence from comparatives and superlatives, as well as constraints on the order in which these suffixes can be stacked, supports the proposed analysis.

In many languages, two referentially disjoint personal pronouns can occur in the same domain (e.g., she saw her), as expected given Binding Principle B. I present corpus-based and judgment-based evidence showing that Finnish patterns differently and is subject to a Pronoun Dissimilation Constraint: When two expressions in the same local domain (coarguments of the same verb) are referentially distinct, realizing them both as personal pronouns is dispreferred. In other words, sequences such as 'She saw her' sound very odd in Finnish, but replacing one of the personal pronouns with an anaphoric demonstrative yields an acceptable sentence. I present evidence showing that the Pronoun Dissimilation Constraint cannot be reduced to a pure disambiguation phenomenon, nor to linear proximity, phonological similarity, or the presence of another option in the language's anaphoric paradigm. After presenting large-scale corpus data assessing the robustness of the Pronoun Dissimilation Constraint, I return to the question about the source of this constraint, and explore links to other work on dissimilation phenomena and obviation patterns in Algonquian languages.

Referring to people using only their name (e.g. Jones came in) is known to evoke the assumption that the individual is male. The same holds with some role nouns (e.g. mechanic, boxer). We explore these effects through the lens of pronoun interpretation in English. In two sentence-completion studies, we show that both form-based (last-name-only style) and meaning-based gender biases (from role nouns) are powerful enough to eliminate otherwise robust verb semantic effects on pronoun interpretation (implicit causality). In addition, the results provide initial evidence that meaning-based biases (at least the ones tested here) can be stronger than form-based biases, which may stem from differences in the form-function mapping.

Speakers often have multiple ways to express the same meaning. The Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis suggests that speakers exploit this variability to maintain a consistent rate of information transmission during language production. Building on prior work linking UID to syntactic reduction, we revisit the finding that the optional complementizer thatin English complement clauses is more likely to be omitted when the clause has low information density (i.e., more predictable). We advance this line of research by analyzing a large-scale, contemporary conversational corpus and using machine learning and neural language models to refine estimates of information density. Our results replicated the established relationship between information density and that-mentioning. However, we found that previous measures of information density based on matrix verbs' subcategorization probability capture substantial idiosyncratic lexical variation. By contrast, estimates derived from contextual word embeddings account for additional variance in patterns of complementizer usage.

Phonological theories typically treat prefixes and suffixes as if phonological processes apply uniformly to both. However, previous studies have found clear asymmetries between the behavior of both affixes. We argue that this is due to phonological processes being easier to learn in suffix position rather than prefix position. To test this, an artificial language learning task was used to evaluate whether phonological learning is symmetrical between affixes. Results pattern in the direction of the hypothesis, namely, that phonological learning is asymmetrically facilitated in suffix position over prefix position, providing support to general cognitive mechanisms being responsible for strong cross-linguistic tendencies.

This study investigates the linguistic properties of two reflexive pronouns in Chinese, ziji (‘self’) and ta-ziji (‘s/he-self’), and how the exempt use of these reflexives relates to the notion of perspective-taking or logophoricity. Using offline forced choice judgment and online self-paced reading experiments, we find that these two reflexives are more similar than typically assumed in the theoretical literature. Both reflexives are sensitive to the discourse topical status and the logophoric role (source/perceiver) of their long-distance antecedents. Relating discourse topicality and the Logophoric Hierarchy to perspective-taking, we posit that perspective-taking is a unifying factor that drives the exempt use of these two reflexives. However, these reflexives differ slightly in that ta-ziji requires a more prominent perspective center than ziji does. In addition, the current study shows that during incremental processing, different types of discourse information can be accessed at different processing stages, which contributes to our understanding of the accessibility of linguistic cues during real-time anaphora resolution.

Language can convey both objective, fact-based information and subjective, opinion-based information. Previous research has focused on linguistic contexts that are associated with subjective information, such as information embedded under find. We aim to complement this existing work by exploring whether particular linguistic contexts are specifically associated with objective information. We report two psycholinguistic experiments testing the acceptability and processing of subjective and objective predicates embedded under the fact that. As a whole, the results suggest that subjective predicates embedded under the fact that are as acceptable and as easy-to-process as objective predicates, suggesting that this construction does not create a context that requires objective, fact-based information.

This paper investigates the reportative evidential kuulemma and the dubitative muka in Finnish (Finno-Ugric). Kuulemma typically indicates that the speaker reports information provided by someone else (hearsay) and is not committed to the truth of the proposition, while muka (roughly: 'supposedly, allegedly, as if') typically signals that the speaker doubts the truth of the proposition, leaving open the information source. This paper explores perspective-shifting and whether these forms can be anchored to someone other than the speaker. I use corpus data and native speaker judgments to test what happens in questions, under the speech verb 'say,' and in free indirect discourse. In questions, both forms appear to stay anchored to the speaker (no interrogative flip). However, when embedded under 'say,' dubitative muka remains speaker-oriented, whereas reportative kuulemma can shift to the subject. In free indirect discourse, both can shift to the character whose point-of-view is expressed. I propose that these differences are partially related to subjectivity: Whereas kuulemma can be described in objective terms, it has been suggested that muka can express more nuanced affect such as surprise and irony. I suggest this subjective nature of muka is related to its speaker-oriented nature, echoing the speaker-orientation default of affective expressions (e.g. predicates of personal taste, epithets, interjections).

We investigate the processing of accusative-marked NPs in Turkish, compared to genitive- and locative-marked NPs. We use psycholinguistic methods (a lexical decision task) to test competing predictions derived from frequency effects in lexical processing on the one hand, and morphosyntactic theories of case containment on the other hand. Our experimental outcomes support a case containment approach to Turkish morphology.