An experiment testing adult Polish speakers' ability to supply dative forms of unfamiliar nouns revealed strong effects of type frequency (performance was better on inflections that apply to large classes) and neighbourhood density (participants were more likely to supply the target inflection with nonce nouns belonging to densely populated…

When speakers refer to the same referent multiple times in a conversation, they tend to follow established patterns of usage, known as "conversational precedents." Research has found that listeners expect speakers to follow precedents, and that this expectation guides their search for referents (Barr, D. J., & Keysar, B. (2002). "Anchoring…

This paper reports three experiments that test the Presupposition-Denial account of complement set reference. According to the theory, complement set focus arises when focus is on the difference between the amount conveyed by a natural language quantifier and a large presupposed amount. We call this difference the shortfall. In this paper, what is…

Explores the hypothesis that speakers formulate their requests to anticipate the potential obstacles (ability, willingness, possession of the object desired, etc.) which hinder addressees in complying with requests and that the comprehension of these requests depends on how well speakers formulate them. (SED)