Three self-paced reading experiments explored the processing of “only” and its interaction with context. In isolated sentences, the focus particle “only” predicts an upcoming contrast. Ambiguous replacive sentences (e.g., “The curator embarrassed the gallery owner in public, not the artist”) with “only” on the subject or object showed faster reading of the contrast phrase (“not the artist”) than without it. The position of “only” also influenced the phrase’s meaning; despite a bias toward object contrasts, subject “only” increased subject interpretations. If preceding context provides another reason for the focus particle, it no longer predicts an upcoming contrast. In biasing contexts including indirect questions, there was no facilitation when “only” marked the argument which answered the question, while “only” on the other argument slowed processing. Both “only” and context influenced interpretation. The results show that focus particles and questions can each influence processing of an upcoming contrast on- and off-line.
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