Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Languages with flexible word order, such as German, typically privilege canonical linearizations (subject-object), with non-canonical orders (object-subject) increasing processing costs. Discourse givenness, however, has been shown to mitigate this cost, in line with expectations that given information should precede new information. The present self-paced reading study investigates how expectation based on linearization preferences influence language comprehension, examining the interaction of word order with three levels of information status (given, implied, new). Results show robust word order effects and graded information-status effects on NP1: given referents were processed fastest, new referents slowest, and implied referents exhibited intermediate processing costs. Crucially, object-first structures were disproportionally facilitated when the object was given, as compared to the other two conditions. Effects on NP2 were largely shaped by expectations established at NP1. These findings indicate that comprehenders form early expectations jointly determined by word order and discourse accessibility, supporting expectation-based accounts of linearization preferences.