This study aims to establish whether the processing of different connectives (e.g., "and," "but") and different coherence relations (addition, contrast) can be modulated by a structural feature of the connected segments--namely, parallelism. While "but" is mainly used to contrast two expressions, "and"…

This study investigates the influence of causal and concessive relations on discourse coherence in Chinese by means of eye movement and self-paced reading techniques. We use the sentential structure like "NP[subscript HUMAN] moved from place A to place B, {because ([Chinese characters omitted] yinwei) /although ([Chinese characters omitted]…

This study concerns the mechanisms involving temporal update in discourse comprehension, comparing traditional approaches based on "Aktionsart" and Iconicity against an approach based on narrative expectations. Our experiments suggest that readers pay more attention to fine-grained discourse properties (such as salient temporal…

Eye tracking was used to explore the role of grammatical aspect and world knowledge in establishing temporal relationships across sentences in discourse. Younger and older adult participants read short passages that included sentences such as "Mrs. Adams was knitting/knitted a new sweater"..."She wore her new garment...".…

Thematization, the relative frequency of a discourse referent, and topicalization are conceptualized as related discourse functions. In a probe recall experiment, a word with a thematized referent was a better recall probe than a word with a nonthematized referent. Also, an agent noun was a better prompt than a recipient, and this semantic…

A text was presented on three levels with regard to lexical density (LD - the quota of lexical words/total amount of words in a sentence). 132 subjects' comprehension of the text (discourse comprehension) was tested by a knowledge test and by subjective ratings. Results for discourse and single-sentence analysis were discussed as well as…

A theory of how readers monitor concerns of characters and make causal inferences during reading is presented. The focus is on the reader's understanding of what characters do when goals either succeed or fail. Knowledge of goal processes enable coherent understanding to be achieved when characters change goal plans and pursue new courses of…

Milton's style of pronominal reference in his essay, "Areopagitica," leads to a lack of comprehension at times and to slow processing. His use of demonstrative pronouns makes it difficult to identify antecedents precisely and quickly. For example, in one case a reader must go back over 400 words to find an antecedent. His use of relative…

Three experiments are reported on the interpretation of conceptual anaphors, defined as those that do not have an explicit linguistic antecedent but one constructed from text. Two experiments showed that conceptual anaphors are quite easily understood but are processed with difficulty; the third one showed mixed results. (three references)…

The mechanisms involved in the assignment of an antecedent to an anaphoric element are examined. Taken together, four experiments suggest that conceptual, although grammatically illegal, anaphors do not cause comprehensive difficulties. (Author/LB)

Processing time and memory for sentences were examined as a function of the degree of semantic and causal relatedness between sentences in short narratives. In Experiments 1-2B, semantic and causal relatedness between sentence pairs was independently manipulated. Causal relatedness was assessed through pretesting and semantic relatedness was…

Describes three experiments that investigated the influence of a context sentence on the processing of a subsequent sentence. Concludes that context can affect within-sentence processes in comprehension. Test materials used in the experiments are appended. (FL)

Presents three mini-essays reviewing progress made on three problems in text comprehension (two traditional and one newer problem): their relationship between sentence processes and text processes; individual differences in discourse comprehension; and the representation of multiple-text information, which exposes fresh views of problems of…

Children's literature, with its complex structures and discourse strategies, helps beginning language students develop reading strategies and begin understanding discourse strategies in native speech. Tsao's notion of discourse analysis is used to introduce topic deletion in a sample of literary texts. (Contains 25 references.) (LB)

A study of the process of listeners' and readers' generation and verification of expectations about spoken and written discourse presented to them examined the possible interactions between surface form and cognitive constraints, to establish baseline measures of the effectiveness of different sentence structures in constraining the production of…