Abstract
This study tested an hypothesis that the hearer of a complex sentence must transform that sentence into the underlying kernel sentence before understanding it, and hence that speed of understanding a sentence would vary with the number and nature of the transformations separating it from its kernel. Descriptive sentences of varying grammatical form were presented to Ss who were asked to verify them, and the speed of verification was taken as an index of speed of understanding. Active sentences were found to be verified faster than passive, affirmative faster than negative, and true faster than false. The true-false variable was found to interact with the affirmative-negative, indicating that the latter difference is not simply syntactical. The consistency of the results with the hypothesis was noteworthy, but transformational complexity was confounded with frequency and length.
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