Ontological knowledge and sentence anomaly

Abstract

According to Keil (1979) , there is a hierarchical one-to-one mapping of the predicate—term relations of language onto the basic structure of knowledge. An attempt was made to replicate and extend Keil's study of the effects of ontological knowledge on judgments of sentence acceptability. In the present study, subjects were presented with wider ranges of stimuli and instructions than those used by Keil. Overall, subjects failed to make sentence acceptability judgments that accord with Keil's formulation. Even in the stimulus condition most closely approximating that used by Keil, subjects accepted sentences that his theory identifies as anomalous. The data suggests that terms referring to objects and terms referring to events cannot be located unambiguously within a single hierarchy. The results of the study further suggest that the range of sentence interpretation exceeds the limits of a rigid hierarchical system.