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The time-course with which readers use event-specific world knowledge (thematic fit) to resolve structural ambiguity was explored through experiments and implementation of constraint-based and two-stage models. In a norming study, subjects completed fragments that ended in the ambiguous region of a reduced relative clause (The crook arrested/by/the/detective). Completion proportions up to and includingthewere influenced by thematic fit. The results were simulated using a competition model in which independently quantified syntactic and semantic constraints simultaneously influenced interpretation. Predictions were then generated for a self-paced reading task using model parameter values established by the off-line simulations. The pattern of reading times matched the predictions of the constraint-based version of the model but differed substantially from a one-region delay garden-path version. In addition …