Inferential Cues for Determining Focus Alternatives: a Visual World Eye-tracking Study

To successfully interpret sentences containing focus-sensitive elements like ‘only’, comprehenders must determine the set of alternatives intended by the speaker, given the content of the sentence and the context in which it is produced. But what kinds of contextually available information do listeners actually use to restrict interpretive domains? Three visual world eye-tracking experiments show that listeners use at least previous mention (Experiment 1), real-world knowledge about specific scenarios (Experiment 2), and conceptual similarity to recently mentioned items (Experiment 3).