Boux, I. & Osterloh, M. & Tomasello, R. & Grisoni, L. & Pulvermüller, F.. (2026). Instantaneous emotion sharing: early brain signatures of understanding expressive communicative actions. Neuropsychologia. 109395. 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2026.109395. 

Words and sentences can be used to carry out a wide range of different communicative actions. Recognizing these actions quickly is crucial for effective understanding. Previous research indicates that communicative action understanding is a rapid process, as brain signatures of different communicative actions differ within ca 250 ms upon appearance of the relevant linguistic information. However, previous work explored a restricted set of communicative actions, leaving other ones still unexplored. In the present study, we examine emotion-related utterances in the 1^st person singular (“I am happy”), which are typically applied to express an emotional state of the speaker, that is, to perform so-called ‘expressive’ communicative action. We recorded brain potentials while subjects read such ‘expressive sentences’ and similar ones in the 3^rd person singular, likely applied to assert or report facts (“he is happy”). Further assertive control past-tense sentences were included to control for any 1^st/3^rd person differences. Brain responses to sentences with expressive communicative actions differed from those to assertives 221-270 ms after the critical sentence-final word appeared, and an even earlier dissociation was observed. These results extend previous findings - from contrasting assertive and directive communicative action - by demonstrating that the brain is quick in discriminating between communicative action, therefore suggesting a generalizable temporal pattern. Since communicative action is processed fast, within ca. 250 ms following the critical utterance-related information is presented, our results are consistent with parallel models of language processing stating that pragmatic processing occurs rapidly and near-simultaneously with that of semantic and morphosyntactic information.