Identifying and using referents in sentence comprehension

Two experiments examined characteristics of text that determine when a repeated noun has a clearly identified referent. Subjects read context-target sentence pairs in which one noun was repeated or used synonymously across the pair. The contexts varied according to (a) whether the verb directed an action, or described a nondirect action or psychological state (e.g., throw vs. need), and (b) whether the modifier of the antecedent was definite or indefinite. In Experiment I, directive verbs led to similar target comprehension times for both modifiers. With nondirective verbs, however, indefinite articles slowed comprehension. Experiment II demonstrated identical effects with synonyms. We argue that verbs and article modifiers influence whether a noun is merely a repeated word in a text, or whether it is redundant at the propositional level.