This study investigates the relationship between three linguistic functions: thetics, miratives and exclamatives. Thetics are an information structure configuration that conveys that the information is new to the addressee. The thetic subtypes selected for this study are the following: existentials (e.g. "There are apples in the…

This paper examines the essential features of a group of constructions that belong to the family of complementary alternation discourse constructions in English. In this group of constructions, X and Y are two situations such that Y is less likely (or more likely) to happen than X. Each member of this group (X Let Alone Y, X Much Less Y, X Never…

Two pilot studies are presented in the context of a discussion of the interpretation of anomalous sentences. In the first study, it was shown that naive language users differ in their judgments of the interpretability of semantically anomalous sentences; in the second, that they coincide in their ranking of the appropriateness of various contexts…

Presents an original description of the psychological processes involved in producing speech. (AM)

The present study investigated why it is that the more concrete the subject noun phrase of a sentence, the more likely the predicate is to be recalled when the subject noun phrase is the cue. The findings were that concretization dramatically influences both the probability of recognition of the subject noun phrase and the probability of recall of…

Refers to the theory which distinguishes two poles in the organization of speech: the selection of units which can be interchanged in the sentence (paradigmatic pole) and the combination of units simultaneously present in the sentence (syntagmatic pole). (DD)

Two experiments examine the extent to which the representation of a sentence depends upon the overall nature of a subject's task, in this case, memorization of a sentence and providing a continuation for a sentence. (AM)

This paper reviews some of the observations made by Vygotsky about the structure and content of inner speech and its precursor egocentric speech, also called private speech. Recent advances in certain areas of linguistics are used to clarify and develop these observations. In particular, the paper focuses on Vygotsky's ideas about the predicative…

Examines the verification of false sentences of the form "All S are P." It was found that the number of properties shared by the subject and predicate concept of the sentence was directly proportional to reaction time. These findings question the assumption that only property relations are prestored in memory. (Author/EJS)

Verifying simple sentences generally involves a process wherein the meanings of individual words are combined to form the meaning of the entire sentence. Three experiments are described in which the combination process was investigated by asking subjects to decide whether S-V-Adj-O sentences were true or false. (Author/RM)

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children, aged 2 to 13, and elicited passives from 262 college students were analyzed. The agentive non-reversible did not appear until after age 9; and until age 11 no child produced both reversible and non-reversible passives. (Author/SW)

An investigation of the relationship between a speaker's decision to treat portions of the information in a sentence as given or new and the syntactic form of the sentence produced. A tendency of English speakers to use alternative surface structure rules to present given information before new information is demonstrated. (AMH)

Research based on a master's thesis submitted at Michigan State University. (VM)

It is suggested that twin discourse functions are served by thematization and topicalization, the former providing stable referential focus and the latter providing momentary referential focus. (Author/AM)

Describes an experiment to test two assumptions concerning what is stored in the memory with regard to sentence structure: (1) that the linear effect observed is based on a tally model rather than on an integrationist mechanism; (2) that this linear effect is not uniquely the result of a mechanism operating at comprehension. (CLK)