Possessor Relations and the Interpretation of Nominative NPs in Japanese

Japanese speakers start interpreting sentences even before the clause-ending predicate is read or heard. We report two questionnaire studies that suggest that the possible semantic relations between NPs are critical in determining the interpretations pursued. Although the properties of individual NPs such as animacy are important, interpretation is modulated by the relations that may hold between NPs (e.g., possessor relations).