Five types of Verb Phrase (VP) anaphors which appear to exist in free variation actually have specific grammatical, semantic, and rhetorical functions which account for the existence of some to the exclusion of others in certain syntactic environments. The five anaphors are: "do so,""do it," Verb Phrase Deletion (VPD), VPD with…

Forty eight undergraduates were assigned to two groups of 24 subjects each. The high association (HA) group was given booklets that contained a series of nouns associatively related according to free association norms, one pair to a page; the low association (LA) group was given booklets containing pairs of associatively unrelated nouns. The…

Study investigated the processing of ambiguous words that varied in frequency of use of their multiple interpretations. Results indicate that, whereas lexical access is an autonomous process, selection of the appropriate interpretation is a post-lexical process that is influenced by frequency information and context. (MM)

This article focuses on the structural and semantic analysis of the sentences containing the pronoun "it" as a formal object. Although at first sight "it" seems to have no meaning whatsoever, it actually plays an important role in the semantic structure of the sentence. The formal object "it" changes the…

A descriptive model is proposed for the study of the communication interactions between a child and the language users around him, based upon a means to record and analyze the adult demands placed upon the child. (Author)

A playful discussion of the subordinate function of the relative pronoun. (RD)

Presents a functional description of punctuation as a delimiter of words, sentences, and paragraphs, and as a semantic and extralinguistic indicator. (AM)

A defense of the passive voice against charges that it is wordy, obscure, and ineffective. (DD)

Analyzes the distribution of information in so-called "synonymous" sentences in the context of a semantic perspective. (AM)

Presents clues for determining whether "short passives," passive sentences from which the "by"-phrase has been deleted, are actually passive or stative. The clues include intensifiers, the verb "seems," contrasts, present tense, past tense, progressive aspect, and confirmation by examples. (CB)

Examines the idiomatic meaning carried in a sentence through the syntactic idiom. The infinitive of negative result is used to examine the understanding of the meaning carried in a sentence by its syntactic structure. (GLR)

Describes the interaction between disjunct constituents and sentential structures and argues for an extension of the theoretical apparatus intially postulated in autosegmental phonology to represent complex syntactic structures containing disjunct constituents with a number of independent phrase markers that intersect at the linear axis. (66…

It is proposed that declarative sentences used in ordinary speech deliver regular, patterned suggestions. The reader or auditor is invited to infer that the utterance is coherent, pertinent, feasible, true, and believed by the speaker and that the speaker could have ascertained its truth. (41 references) (MSE)

Provides evidence that sentence processing does not make use of grammatical theories with empty categories. A linguistic account is provided of unbounded dependencies that do not use empty categories and can serve as the basis of a processing model. It is concluded that empty categories are not psychologically real. (28 references) (JL)