Abstract
This study aimed to investigate how extra-linguistic information affect online utterance comprehension using the Korean honorific system. Even in a single utterance processing, a listener expects a certain form of honorifics following a term of address based on its social status information. When deviation from the expected usage of honorific form is detected, the violation would elicit an N400 effect. However, in our results the N400 disappearred when the listener could infer a close social distance between the communicators from a term of address. Our findings suggested that the listener builds up expectance toward the upcoming honorific form based on the perceived social information reflected on the term of address.
