Processing Prenominal Adjectives during Sentence Comprehension

Abstract

The time course of semantic processing of two prenominal adjectives contained within a noun phrase was investigated. In English, the ordering of adjectives is determined by their meaning. Adjectives specifying color (e.g., red) generally follow adjectives that specify size (e.g., big) and adjectives that specify aspects of general description (e.g., young). In two experiments, reading time was measured on sentences containing a noun phrase in which the order of prenominal adjectives was varied. In Exp. 1, the adjectives specified size and color (e.g., the big red balloon vs the red big balloon). In Exp. 2, the adjectives specified general description and color (e.g., the pretty yellow dress vs the yellow pretty dress). The results of both experiments showed that the processing difficulty arising from comprehending an adjective order violation emerged before the head noun was processed, indicating that comprehenders semantically processed the meanings of prenominal adjectives prior to interpreting the meaning of the head noun.