Two studies investigated the effects of prosody and pragmatic context on off-line and on-line processing of sentences like "John greeted Paul yesterday and Ben today". Such sentences are ambiguous between the so-called "nongapping" reading, where "John greeted Ben", and the highly unpreferred "gapping" reading, where "Ben greeted Paul". In the…

It is proposed that speech rhythm, adapted to needs of written language, should constitute the basis of sound punctuation. It is the failure to recognize this principle that has led some writers to recommend a punctuation system that is mechanical rather than natural and meaningful. (CHK)

The analysis of syllable and pause durations in speech production can provide information about the properties of a speaker's grammatical code. Seven experiments analyzed syllable and pause durations in structurally ambiguous sentences. Results showed that a single hierarchial principle provided a unified account of speech timing effects for…