The purpose of this study was to determine if the Bransford and Franks linear effect is or is not a function of semantic integration. The subjects were 32 volunteers from two undergraduate psychology courses at the University of Georgia. Stimulus materials consisted of four meaningful (M) complex embedded English sentences and four meaningless (M-) sentences. The procedure was similar to that used by Bransford and Franks (1971). Subjects were randomly assigned to either the M or the M- condition. The two conditions were identical except for the type of sentence used. The experimental session was carried out in two phases, acquisition and recognition. Acquisition involved a test of short-term memory for each sentence. Recognition involved rating sentences on the basis of whether the subject had or had not experienced it during acquisition. Results showed a significant linear effect for the meaningless sentences. Furthermore, although the slope of the effect for meaningless sentences was flatter than that of the control, other data rules out a semantic integration explanation based on the availability of semantic information contained in sentence structure. The evidence would thus appear to support the view that structure and content are closely interrelated in language comprehension. (TS)