We propose a cognitive-psychological model of linguistic intuitions about copredication statements. In copredication statements, like "The book is heavy and informative," the nominal denotes two ontologically distinct entities at the same time. This has been considered a problem for standard truth-conditional semantics. In this paper, we…

We present a self-organizing approach to sentence processing that sheds new light on notional plurality effects in agreement attraction, using pseudopartitive subject noun phrases (e.g., "a bottle of pills"). We first show that notional plurality ratings (numerosity judgments for subject noun phrases) predict verb agreement choices in…

Computer analyses of text characteristics are often used by reading teachers, researchers, and policy makers when selecting texts for students. The authors of this article identify components of language, discourse, and cognition that underlie traditional automated metrics of text difficulty and their new Coh-Metrix system. Coh-Metrix analyzes…

Binding theory (e.g., Chomsky, 1981) has played a central role in both syntactic theory and models of language processing. Its constraints are designed to predict that the referential domains of pronouns and reflexives are nonoverlapping, that is, are complementary; these constraints are also thought to play a role in online reference resolution.…

Describes a computer-based connectionist-type network model that correctly identified the gender of a set of French nouns, relying solely on information inherent in the nouns' structures, in the absence of explicit rules for evaluating nouns, through discovering criterial gender-specific features through examples of masculine and feminine nouns.…

The role of prosodic breaks (PB) in the parsing of locally ambiguous noun phrases (NP) + verb (V) + NP + prepositional phrase (PP) was examined in four word-monitoring experiments. Results indicate that PBs can influence sentence parsing. The article discusses possible mechanisms in the framework of two models. (32 references) (Author/CK)

Suggests that there are universal constraints that explain the so-called "Definiteness Effect," i.e., the fact that certain constructions do not allow for definite arguments in certain positions. The article founds its proposal on the analysis of data from Hungarian and English. (15 references) (Author/CK)

In the study of language acquisition, one of the central problems is how to bridge a qualitative gap between the primary linguistic data (PLD) that children are exposed to and the final state of a particular grammar that children acquire. Universal Grammar (UG) is assumed to play a crucial role in this problem. The aims of this report are: (1) to…

Examines inalienable possession in French and Mandarin with the aim of bringing out typological affinities. In particular, two unresolved issues are re-examined: Haiman's Iconicity Hypothesis and the question of the protypical semantic categories of iposs. (32 references) (Author/CK)

Focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the production of homophone confusions in writing. The article overviews five experiments demonstrating that the homophone effect can be experimentally induced in French adults. Findings are interpreted in the framework of an activation model. (45 references) (Author/CK)

Points out that in languages in which nouns have a grammatical gender, word recognition can be estimated by gender-decision response times. Notes that although gender decision has yet to be used extensively, it has proved sensitive to several factors affecting lexical access and that this task can be used with linguistic information from other…