Five experiments used self-paced reading time to examine the ways in which complex noun phrases influence the interpretation of referentially dependent expressions. Results indicate that the entity introduced by a major constituent of a sentence is more accessible as a referent than the entities introduced by component noun phrases. (Author/VWL)

Observation and comparison of native speaking and English-as-a-Second-Language students' reading patterns, overall reading comprehension, and comprehension of coreferential pronouns revealed that misunderstanding of coreferential ties reflected a misunderstanding of the descriptive phrases to which the pronouns referred. (22 references) (Author/CB)