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Psycholinguistic studies of language processing have revolved historically around “modular” and “interactive” accounts of language use. Experimental reports diverge in claims for the penetration of non-linguistic background information on processing for sentence comprehension. Syntactic processing effects can persist despite available contextual constraints that are sufficient to resolve temporary ambiguity or garden path errors. Nevertheless, there are multiple reports of interactive effects between basic sentence processing and both semantic and non-linguistic contextual information. The chapter suggests a rationalization of such conflicting findings in standard psycholinguistic and experimental pragmatic research, relying on interactions between language comprehension systems and language production systems. Production processes are designed to incorporate discourse and environmental constraints on linguistic formulation. These may be used to filter the products of comprehension mechanisms. A key feature of the argument for complementary roles of the two systems is a degree of modular processing for syntax to be found in both systems.