In the course of sentence processing, comprehenders must identify relationships between sentence elements in accor- dance with the sentence’s syntactic structure. However, low- level associative processes, which may yield interpretations in- compatible with global sentence context, have also been sug- gested to be at play in the early moments of processing. In two experiments, we examine the influence of low-level associa- tive cues alongside combinatorial information in sentences of varying complexity. Verb-driven predictions are used as means to explore the use of these information sources in the earliest moments of processing. In addition, we explore effects of lis- tener age on processing, given past claims that older adults’ predictions are more shallow. However, results showed similar patterns across age groups, although we did find clear ways in which associative cues overshadowed combinatorial computa- tions when these cues occurred very close to the verb.

Though communicative goals are an important element in lan-guage production, few studies investigate the extent to whichthese goals might affect the form and content of referring ex-pressions. In this study, we directly contrast two tasks withdifferent goals: identification and instruction giving. Speak-ers had to refer to a target building nearby or further away, sothat their addressee would distinguish it between other build-ings (identification) or give route directions and use the samebuilding as a landmark (instructions). Our results showed thatirrespective of goals, the referring expressions consisted of thesame types of attributes, yet the attribute frequency and for-mulation differed. In the identification task, references werelonger, contained more locative and more post-nominal mod-ifiers. In addition, referential choices were influenced by thevisual distance between the speaker and the target: when thespeaker observed the target from far, references were longerand contained more often locative modifiers.

In the present study, we investigate if and when speakers refer to moving entities in route directions (RDs). On the one hand, there is a general agreement that landmarks should be perceptually salient and stable objects. On the other hand, animated movement attracts visual attention, making entities intrinsically salient. In two experiments, we tested to what extent people are prepared to use moving entities. Our results show that participants mention moving entities when the communicative setting affords such references (route directions in a joint communicative setting) and when the movement is informative for the place where a turn should be taken.