Time in language: Event duration in language comprehension Marta Coll-Florit a , Silvia P. Gennari b,⇑ a Arts and Humanities Department, Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Tibidabo Avenue, 39-43, 08035 Barcelona, Spain b Department of Psychology, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK article info Article history: Accepted 4 September 2010 Available online 26 November 2010 Keywords: Language comprehension Semantics Event duration Time perception Event structure Temporal language abstract This work investigates how we process and represent event dura- tion in on-line language comprehension. Specifically, it examines how events of different duration are processed and what type of knowledge underlies their representations. Studies 1–4 examined verbs and phrases in different contexts. They showed that durative events took longer to process than non-durative events and that the duration attributed to the stimulus events correlated with on-line processing times. Studies 5 and 6 indicated that durative events occur in semantically more diverse contexts and elicit semantically more diverse associations than non-durative events. Semantic and contextual diversity also correlated with attributed durations and processing times. Results indicate that (a) event-spe- cific durations are computed on-line from multiple unfolding cues, (b) processing cost and duration representations emerge from semantic and contextual diversity reflecting our experience, and (c) key components of duration representations may be situa- tion-specific knowledge of causal and contingency relations between events. Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Every day people hear or read about events in the world and effortlessly understand how long these events go on for. In reading Pirates stormed a cargo vessel, for example, we quickly understand that there was a sudden attack and capture of the vessel. In contrast, when reading Pirates held two foreign hostages, we understand that hostages were held for some period of time during which other likely events happened, e.g., a ransom request. How are people able to understand the duration of 0010-0285/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2010.09.002 ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Psychology, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK. E-mail address: s.gennari@psych.york.ac.uk (S.P. Gennari). Cognitive Psychology 62 (2011) 41–79 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cognitive Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cogpsych