When we start reading a piece of text, how do our brains know to read it in such a way that accounts for both the upcoming punctuation and sentence structure that we haven’t gotten to yet?

Question

When we start reading a piece of text, how do our brains know to read it in such a way that accounts for both the upcoming punctuation and sentence structure that we haven’t gotten to yet?

In: Biology

Answer 1

We can’t.

Instead, we form sentences in a way that makes the structure clear. For example, is I said:

The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.

You’d probably think the sentence doesn’t make any sense, but if I said:

The housing complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.

It would not only easily make sense, but it would also clarify the structure of the previous sentence, causing it to now make sense.

Sentences that are formed in a way where it’s difficult to determine the structure as you hear or read it are called [garden-path sentences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence).