Antecedent focus and conceptual distance effects in References 252 category noun-phrase anaphora

Previous work has shown that category noun-phrase anaphors (e.g., bird) are read faster when they refer to typical antecedents (e.g., robin) compared to atypical ones (e.g., goose) (Garrod & Sanford, 1977). However, when the antecedent is in a syntactic cleft, there is an inverse effect of typicality (Almor, 1999). We further examined this inverse effect in two self-paced reading time studies. The results of Experiment 1 extend the inverse typicality effect to a more general effect of conceptual distance by showing faster reading times to an anaphor (e.g., vehicle) when its antecedent is clefted and more conceptually distant in a category hierarchy (e.g., hatchback) than when it is closer (e.g., car). Experiment 2 examines whether it is cleft or focus status that causes inverse conceptual distance effects and finds that inverse effects are not confined to cleft constructions, but are also present when the antecedent is in grammatical subject position. The typicality of an antecedent with respect to its category anaphor has been shown to be an important factor in anaphor resolution, with typical antecedents (robin) causing faster processing times at a following category anaphor (bird) than atypical antecedents (goose). This finding, first published by Garrod and Sanford (1977), has been replicated unde