Suggests that thematic roles might best be viewed as verb-specific concepts and that this conceptual/world knowledge is computed and used immediately in online language processing. Discusses results in relation to other recent treatments of thematic roles as well as constraint-based and garden path models. (68 references) (Author/CK)

Presents a view of the relative roles of logical presupposition and shared knowledge in "it"-cleft constructions. Indicators of shared knowledge relate to a speaker's "assumptions" about the state of the hearer's knowledge, whereas presuppositions indicate a speaker's "requirements" for what should be included within…