Purpose: Lexical processing impairments such as delayed and reduced activation of lexical-semantic information have been linked to syntactic processing disruptions and sentence comprehension deficits in individuals with aphasia (IWAs). Lexical-level deficits can also preclude successful lexical encoding during sentence processing and amplify the…

The goal of this paper is to tease apart two approaches to the source of children's consistent scope assignment in negative sentences containing logical connectives: the Semantic Subset Principle and the Semantic Subset Maxim. Previous developmental work has observed that four- to six-year-old children across languages have difficulty with…

Natural languages contain systematic relationships between verb meaning and verb argument structure. Artificial language learning studies typically remove those relationships and instead pair verb meanings randomly with structures. Adult participants in such studies can detect statistical regularities associated with words in these languages and…

In English, a sentence like "The cat didn't eat the carrot or the pepper" typically receives a "neither" interpretation; in Japanese it receives a "not this or not that" interpretation. These two interpretations are in a subset/superset relation, such that the "neither" interpretation (strong reading)…

This paper reports an experiment that investigates interpretive distinctions between two different expressions of generalization in Spanish. In particular, our aim was to find out when the distinction between generic statements (GS) such as "Tigers have stripes" and universally quantified statements (UQS) such as "All tigers have…

A locus of the difference in meaning between distributive and collective sentences can be the quantifiers that modify their subjects. A current theoretical account of distributive and collective sentences claims that sentences with quantifiers such as "the" in English, or "los" in Spanish, in subject position and an indefinite…

This study investigates the interpretation of disjunction words (English or) in negative sentences by Turkish- and German-speaking children. Both children and adults were asked to judge Turkish/German sentences corresponding to the English sentence "This animal did not eat the carrot or the pepper." Children acquiring both languages…

This dissertation examines Spanish Direct Object clitic pronouns in Argentine spoken Spanish of adults and children (ages 4;0-7;0). It concentrates on (Finite verb + Nonfinite verb) constructions that allow both pre-verbal (Proclisis) and a postverbal (Enclisis) clitic placement. Previous corpus studies have shown that lexical (finite verb),…

Semantically reversible sentences are prone to misinterpretation and take longer for typically developing children and adults to comprehend; they are also particularly problematic for those with language difficulties such as aphasia or Specific Language Impairment. In our study, we used fMRI to compare the processing of semantically reversible and…

Two off-line and on-line reading tasks investigated the real-time comprehension of doubly quantified sentences with sentential negation interaction. The results showed that perceivers experienced processing difficulty in assigning inverse-scope interpretations to the sentences with double operators, not only when such sentences appeared in…

Analyzes the "easy to be V" structure in terms of the semantic features of sentences with this structure. These sentences can be classified into types, ranging from the "prototype" with the most features contributing to its transparency, to the "peripheral" with the fewest of such features. (Author/CB)

A study investigated the inferential processing involved in the comprehension of a class of complex predicates (such as "remember to,""manage to,""fail to," and "neglect to") that are known as implicative. The subjects, 64 college students, were timed while they drew inferences from syntactically affirmative…

A study of the effect of lexical items within first sentences which affect reading expectations for the remainder of the passage, and of the effects of violation of reader expectation following first sentences, showed poorer performance by low achievers on the "violating" passage and a performance increase with familiar content regardless of a…

Two experiments examined the roles of semantic and surface information in reading and recognizing sentences. Results indicate that reading and recognition are interactive processes, involving conceptually driven and data driven operations; the interaction may be either automatic or controlled. Semantic and surface information are conceptualized as…

Reports three studies which explored relationships between prototypicality and sentence structure in recall, preference ratings, and natural dictionary definitions. The results can be explained in terms of the sensitivity of sentence production processes to the lexical or conceptual accessibility of prototypes. (Author/AMH)