Eight experiments evaluated a core assumption of several theories of text processing, the shared resource assumption, which states that component text processes share limited processing resources. Short texts each contained two critical sentences that together warranted a causal inference. The syntactic structure of the second sentence was either…

AN IMPORTANT HYPOTHESIS OF GENERATIVE GRAMMATICAL THEORY IN RECENT YEARS HAS BEEN THAT GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS ARE MEANING-PRESERVING. THIS THESIS IS AN ATTEMPT TO SHOW THAT IF CERTAIN OTHER COMMON THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS ARE HELD CONSTANT, THAT HYPOTHESIS IS UNTENABLE. RULES OF WORD-DERIVATION--SUFFIXATION, PREFIXATION,…

Examines the level of explanatory adequacy outlined by Chomsky's theory of transformational grammar and finds it inadequate. (CK)

The influence of children's levels of field-dependence-independence on their performance with the passive transformation was investigated. Eighty 6th graders, classified as field-dependent or field-independent, were presented with sentence-question combinations, each in either the active or passive voice, and numbers of correct responses were…

Structural grammars are seen to have a definite place in child development research aimed at the development of tests and language programs designed to alleviate child language problems. (Author/KW)

A hypothesis based on the psycholinguistic derivation of sentences was tested. The task required that sentences temporarily stored in memory be transformed and spoken with delayed auditory feedback. Available from Plenum Publishing Corp., 227 W. 17th St., New York, NY 10011. (Author/RM)

Summarizes author's work in developing a transformational-generative grammar which can account for concurrent production of two or several languages. (DH)

THIS IS THE FIRST MAJOR SECTION OF A CHAPTER PREPARED FOR "THE MANUAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY," P.H. MUSSEN, EDITOR, IN PREPARATION. IT IS AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR WRITTEN FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS AND PRESENTS SOME OF THE MAJOR IDEAS THAT HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED IN MODERN LINGUISTIC THEORY, ALONG WITH CERTAIN OF THEIR PSYCHOLOGICAL…

The author has developed a functional model for some aspects of language behavior which attempts to link a number of experimental findings within a relatively simple framework. In this paper the author sets out to "axiomatise some features of the model" (which had its origins in an attempt to account for a range of phenomena concerned…

Using methods developed in transformational generative grammar, three types of nominal constructions in Spanish are treated in this paper: Fact nominalizations ("[El] Escribir es agradable"), Manner nominalizations ("El tocar [de la mujer] es agradable"), and Abstract noun nominalizations ("La construccion rapida de esta escuela es dudosa"). While…

Tested a hypothesized relationship between rules of sentence transformation and preresponse processing time in a short-term memory and transformation task. Data showed that the amount of processing required by different grammatical transformations does not relate to the theoretical derivation. Available from Plenum Publishing Corp., 227 W. 17th…

A number of experimental tasks were conducted in which subjects were asked to interpret and create novel noun-noun compounds. Results indicate that semantic relationships that hold between members of these compounds cannot be characterized in terms of a finite list of appropriate compounding relationships. (CHK)

Research supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. (DD)