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From the perspective of a person trying to understand a sentence, language is a continuous flow of information distributed over time. Somehow, the listener translates this stream of information into discrete and rapidly sequenced units of sound, meaning, and structure, and does so in real time, that is, nearly instantaneously. The results of these complex analyses are then integrated into a single coherent interpretation, even in the presence of considerable ambiguity. The challenge facing us is to account for how people accomplish this. Asking the listener or reader for an answer to this question provides little useful information; the relevant processes are not generally available to conscious reflection. We must therefore rely on other methods of investigation. One might surmise that the ideal method would mirror the properties of comprehension itself (Osterhout, McLaughlin, & Bersick, 1997). The ideal method should …