Binomial expressions, of the form Xand Y, often prefer one sequence of elements over the other. This investigation examines the hypothesis that such preferences are due, in part at least, to phonetic properties of the conjoined words. Native speakers revealed highly significant preference patterns when asked to judge conjoined CVC syllables, in English, German and Afrikaans – patterns which could be associated with phonetic properties of the vowel segments. The prosodic structure of the binomial expression also appeared to play a role in determining order preferences.

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In human interaction, speakers and listeners rely on a number of interactional conventions, they make assumptions about each other's knowledge and likely behaviour, and they have internalised a set of textual schemata. These phenomena are studied in linguistic sub-disciplines such as pragmatics and text linguistics, and they are obviously implicated in the decoding processes at work during LC. As such, they cannot be omitted from this survey article. Unfortunately, however, relatively little research has been carried out on their role in listening processes and strategies. We shall therefore try to characterise the nature of the problem by referring to the more general descriptions of the comprehension process undertaken by Labov and Beaugrande, and conclude by mentioning some aspects of artificial intelligence research-a field of study which has endeavoured to come to terms with the way language comprehension is dependent on cognitive schemata.

Starting from the well-known difference betweenI ‵thought he was married (which he is)– where the complement is given a factual interpretation – andI thought he was ‵married (but he isn’t)– which is counterfactual – this article examines the syntactic, semantic, contextual and prosodic conditions under which factual and counterfactual interpretations can emerge. Factuality is distinguished from factivity, and concerns a person’s (usually the speaker’s) subjective assessment of whether the propositional content of a sentence or sentence fragment conforms or conflicts with his perception of reality. The modal nature of factuality is stressed, as is the contribution of tense and intonation to the emergence of factuality interpretations.

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