Predicting nouns following adjectives in Greek-speaking adults

Abstract

Predictive language processing enables listeners to anticipate upcoming words using available linguistic cues. In Greek, adjectives provide both semantic information and grammatical-gender agreement, offering a unique window into how these cues jointly guide real-time comprehension. The present study examined how semantic and grammatical cues in adjectives influence prediction in adulthood. Thirty-three native speakers of Greek, divided into three age groups (19–30, 48–60, and 61–80 years), completed a webcam-based eye-tracking task using the Gorilla platform. Participants viewed a 2×2 visual array while listening to spoken sentences containing adjectives that varied in predictive informativeness across four conditions: No Cue, Semantic Only, Gender Only, and Semantic + Gender. Results showed that all age groups engaged in predictive processing, with the highest anticipatory fixations occurring when semantic and gender cues co-occurred. Younger adults demonstrated the earliest and strongest cue-based predictions, whereas older adults were slower overall, and relied more heavily on semantic information. These findings show the added value of examining morphology in the study of prediction and provide new evidence of age-related changes in the integration of linguistic cues during comprehension.