One theory of linguistic information processing asserts that there is a preliminary incomplete analysis of linguistic information which lets people judge how difficult the information will be to process completely. The present study investigates the reliability and validity of such judgments of comprehensibility and discusses some of their…

TWENTY-EIGHT SS (SUBJECTS) WERE PRESENTED WITH COMPUTER-GENERATED AGRAMMATICAL STATEMENTS, AND ASKED TO CARRY OUT TWO TASKS ON EACH OF TWO EXPERIMENTAL DAYS. TASK 1 WAS A FORCED-CHOICE EXPERIMENT IN WHICH 50 PAIRS OF STATEMENTS WERE PRESENTED AURALLY TO EACH S, WHO HAD TO SELECT THAT MEMBER OF THE PAIR WHICH HE FELT WAS THE BEST APPROXIMATION TO A…

Language development in preschool children was studied using pairs of pictures with three types of verbal elaboration formed for each pair. After a training trial thirty children listened to one of three types of elaboration (simple sentence, compound or complex sentence, and paragraph). They were asked to name the corresponding response item.…

This report describes part of a longer study on sentence comprehension. The long range goal is to identify distinct levels of processing in terms of the types of linguistic and extralinguistic information each level uses. The focus of this part of the study is sentences with filler-gap relations, such as, "This is the girl the teacher wanted to…

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)

Based on part of a dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree. Revised version of a paper given at the 80th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Houston, Texas, November 1970. (VM)

Investigates factors which condition deletion of plural /s/ in Peruvian Spanish. There is more /s/ deletion in plural forms than in monomorphemic forms. But 1,304 examples of plural /s/ from informal interviews with native speakers of Peruvian Spanish show plural marker tends to be retained when ambiguity would otherwise result. (Author/LMO)

A presentation of an experiment testing the claim that on-line syntactic processing is autonomous and not affected by semantic content. Results suggested that before the clause boundary is reached, syntactic decisions can be influenced by prior semantic context. An appendix containing numerous examples of clauses and probe words is included. (AMH)

Suggests that cumulative dynamic analysis of the semantic structure of the incoming message is subconsciously performed by interpreters. (Author/RL)

This chapter, to be included in "Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology," edited by P.A. Mussen, deals with the connection between the acquisition of language and the growth of intellect, and the connection between both of these and the process of maturation. The author feels that various theories of development cannot account for the child's…

Research conducted at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree. (VM)

The question of whether word meanings have internal structure identical in kind to the syntax of sentences is examined. Evidence is sought for the structural aspects of word meaning and the issue of whether judgements of similarity between words is based on meaning content or on meaning structure is raised. Four hypotheses were tested: (1)…

Recent attempts to classify the meanings of two-word utterances expressed by young children have assumed that children always intend one of the meanings adults might express. This paper challenges that assumption and suggests an alternative approach to determining the meaning of these utterances. (Author/RM)

This paper describes and gives the results of a psycholinguistic experiment investigating the impact of certain surface syntactic structures on the perception and memory of language. The basic assumption is that the content of an utterance must be its most salient aspect in memory. The for of an utterance, its surface grammar and phonology, must…

This paper examines and criticizes Lakoff's notions of a natural logic and of a generative semantics described in terms of logic. The author argues that the relationship of these notions to logic as normally understood is unclear but suggests a number of possible interpretations of the thesis of generative semantics. Further, on these…