Previous studies using artificial languages suggest that sentence production can be guided by verb-specific as well as verb-general statistics present in the language input. Here we investigated whether the statistical properties of ongoing input in the speakers' native language systematically affected their sentence production. Three experiments…

The current study examined preschool children's ability to evaluate the entailment patterns yielded by sentences containing two downward entailing (DE) operators, "every" and "no." When "no" precedes "every," the entailment pattern typically licensed by "every" changes, but only if "no"…

Two eye-tracking experiments examined the effects of sentence structure on the processing of complement coercion, in which an event-selecting verb combines with a complement that represents an entity (e.g., "began the memo"). Previous work has demonstrated that these expressions impose a processing cost, which has been attributed to the…

This dissertation investigates the patterning of Macedonian direct object DPs with respect to clitic pronouns. The occurrence of clitics with direct objects in Macedonian varies along two dimensions, the type of DP and the position of DP. Two broad classes are considered, regular and wh DPs, and positions both within IP and at the left periphery.…

Direct quotation can be a source of meaning in storybook texts for beginning readers. The author of this article sketches the linguistic complexity of direct quotation and offers instructional strategies. Three aspects of direct quotation are examined: the cluster of print features and syntactic characteristics that direct quotation involves, the…

Paper read at the Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association of America, December 29, 1968, in New York, New York. (DS)

A study investigated the differences made in the meaning of a passage in English by placing adverbial clauses before (preposing) or after (postposing) the verb. Examples are: "When the wolf arrived, he was picking apples"; "He was picking apples when the wolf arrived"; "While he was picking apples, the wolf arrived"; and "The wolf arrived while he…

Argues that in an unmarked sentence the verbs will be stressed, and that in determining patterns of sentence stress the vital consideration should be the speaker's point of view. (AM)

This paper describes various aspects of syntactic theory, including lexical, functional, and phrasal categories and how they are put together in clauses and sentences, how words are represented in the mental lexicon, and how noun phrases are assigned structural and semantic information. Language acquisition and the treatment of language disorders…

Discourse analysis attempts to identify and describe the semantic relationships among units of thought larger than a word (predications). Two basic types of these relationships exist between predications, conceptual and nonconceptual. A conceptual relationship exists between two predications when they share a concept or when a concept in one…

In English there seems to be a large group of so-called reflexive verbs that do not possess any definable reflexive meaning. Grammatical reflexives are distinguishable from semantic reflexives and display considerable variation from one another also. Eight patterns or groupings of verbs are considered. (Author/SW)

The acquisition of verbs may be more difficult than noun acquisition because verbs encode information that is inherently less stable and more ephemeral. A sorting-strategies method was utilized to analyze young children's acquisition of verb meaning. (DF)

Part of a dissertation, Stanford University; research supported in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. (DD)