Where are the cookies? Two- and three-year-olds use number-marked verbs to anticipate upcoming nouns.

•We tested predictive use of English subject–verb agreement in online comprehension.•Toddlers and adults used an agreeing verb (“Where is/are…”) to predict subject number properties.•Effects appeared before the noun: clear evidence for pre-activation from a morphosyntactic cue.•Shows broad scope of prediction in comprehension, a requirement of error-based learning accounts.