To adress the first question, we asked participants for each ambiguous noun to imagine a
typical situation, and to write down the number of referents involved. The resulting numbers
were coded as either singular (number of referents = 1) or plural (> 1). The
resulting world-knowledge data and the original frequency data correlate strongly (r = .78).
The original speeded-grammaticality judgment data correlate well with both measures (mean r =
.43).
We then conducted two word-by-word non-cumulative selfpaced-reading experiments with the disambiguating finite verb either in sentence-final position (as in the SGJ-study, cf. (1)), or followed by three words (cf. (2)). For sentences like (1), reading times on the auxiliary correlate substantially with the frequency and world-knowledge data (mean r = .46). For sentences like (2), we found only marginal correlations in the disambiguating region, both for word-wise and region-wise reading times.
Our findings allow two main conclusions. First, one has to be cautious with conclusions concerning frequency and first-pass preferences, as there might be additional factors underlying both frequency and preferences. Second, for processes triggered by the clause-final verb, speeded-grammaticality judgments and self-paced reading give comparable results. Furthermore, despite measuring at the sentence wrap-up position, having the disambiguating verb in clause-final position leads to sharper results than having it some words before the end of the clause. We hypothesize that this is due to verb-related processes being an inherent part of sentence-wrap-up in verb-final constructions.