Clause Sentences Research Articles

Children's comprehension of time-altered sentences.

The influence of speech timing on children's auditory processing of sentences was examined with a question-answering comprehension task. Sentences were presented under two conditions, one employing natural speech and the other speech with an electronically-altered temporal pattern. Three types of sentences in each presentation condition were administered to children enrolled in the first, second and third grades. The sentence types consisted of center-embedded (SS) and right-branching (OS) relative clause sentences and conjoined constructions. The main effects of presentation condition, sentence type, and grade level were each significant, as was the three-way interaction. The results are discussed with regard to the interaction among speech timing, sentence structure, and children's age.

The development of grammars underlying children's interpretation of complex sentences

It is argued that children's knowledge of the structure of multiple clause sentences and the rules governing control of missing complement subjects (PRO) can be described in terms of four grammar types which constitute separate developmental stages. These grammar types are believed to develop following an initial stage when children rely on a strategy to interpret multiple clause sentences. In order to test this hypothesis, 64 children ranging from 3;2 to 8;3 years of age were interviewed on four separate occassions. During the first interview a spontaneous language sample was collected and a Developmental Sentence Score (DSS), a measure of grammatical development, was obtained for each child. During the second and third interviews each child was askedto act out a total of 45 complex sentences. Fifty of the children returned for a fourth interview which included an acting out task and a judgment task. The five stages were associated, a priori, with specific patterns of control and the children were classified according to either grammar type or use of the initial strategy on the basis of their response patterns to a selected set of the 45 experimental constructions. The hypothesis of the four grammar types and their sequential development was supported by the fact that the children belonging to each grammar type differed significantly with respect to age and DSS scores. Furthermore, all the means were sequentially ordered in the predicted direction. Tests involving the relationship of grammar type to (1) reliability of response patterns across interviews, and (2) ability to identify semantically deviant sentences provided independent support for the theory of the four grammar types. There was only limited support for the existence of the initial stage.

Accelerating language learning in young children.

ABSTRACTTo examine the effects of direct intervention on language learning, 18 children ranging in age from 3;6 to 4;6 were systematically taught linguistic structures still beyond their developmental grasp. Four types of relative clause sentences were trained, using a toy manipulation task. Solid improvement was found in the performance of subjects in the two experimental conditions between the Pre- and Post-test Phases. No significant improvement was demonstrated by the control condition subjects. This successful outcome is viewed as demonstrating that the language learning process is somewhat independent of cognitive development. In addition, error response analyses indicated that the First Noun strategy accounted for the majority of errors, providing support for the canonical–sentoid hypothesis.

What Makes People Understand Things?

Objective Students will understand the role of problem in story plotting for, comma placement in multiple clause sentences, ratio as exemplified in percentage, the origins of World War II, or how final e influences the first vowel sound in a cvcv combination).

The interpretation of pronominal reference by retarded and normal readers.

Summary. Retarded and normal readers were required to interpret two clause sentences in which the pronominal subject of one clause agreed with the named subject of the other. If the pronominal subject appears in the main clause, the subjects cannot have the same identity. If it is in the subordinate clause, the subjects may have the same or different identities. Some sentences followed an indirect speech format in which the subordinate clause is usually preceded by the main; others contained subordinate clauses headed by an adverb, which are not fixed in relation to the main clause. A simple order based solution sometimes adopted by young children avoids the main and subordinate distinction: if the pronominal subject precedes the named subject its reference is restricted to a different identity (ID2). The retarded subjects produced significantly fewer ID2 interpretations when these were obligatory, confirming that syntactic problems may be implicated in reading retardation. The group × set interaction was not significant, although the normal readers were too advanced to apply the order strategy. Since the retarded readers did not spontaneously apply the order strategy the possibility of teaching it where the main: subordinate distinction is too difficult to operationalise is raised.

Use of Prosody and Syntactic Markers in Children’s Comprehension of Spoken Sentences

A comparison was made of four- and five-year-old children’s comprehension of coordinate, center-embedded relative clause, and right-branching relative clause sentences under four conditions of presentation: (1) prosody (P) and syntactic markers (M) intact; (2) P intact and M eliminated; (3) M intact and P eliminated; and (4) M and P eliminated. The number of semantic-syntactic relationships in a sentence that were correctly acted out were analyzed by age, sentence type, and conditions of presentation. More relationships were acted out appropriately by five year olds. Differences between sentence type were significant with coordinate sentence type the easiest and right-branching sentence type the most difficult. Conditions of presentation did not significantly affect responses, although there was a significant interaction between condition and sentence type. Scores were significantly lower for center-embedded sentences when M was intact and P eliminated. It was concluded that word order was the major linguistic cue used by the children to process these sentences.

Recognition memory for presuppositions of relative clause sentences

The form of certain relative clause sentences is affected by the pragmatic presuppositions the speaker makes concerning his listener's state of knowledge. The role of such presuppositions in memory was investigated by testing subjects' recognition for minor wording changes that either did or did not affect presupposition. Recognition for wording changes affecting presupposition was superior to recognition for changes not affecting presupposition. The same results were obtained for filler items having presuppositional properties similar to those of relative clause sentences. These results indicate that models of sentence representation based on syntactic deep structure are too restricted in scope.

Phenomena of Tense and Aspect in Japanese Relative Clauses

Tense and aspect markers in Japanese relative clauses contrast with each other in unique ways not observed in matrix sentences. Different kinds of semantic contrasts appear under particular conditions, depending on whether the relative clause and matrix sentence verbal phrases represent actions vs. states, or are habitual vs. non-habitual. When verbal phrases of both the relative clause and the matrix sentence name non-habitual past actions, the occurrence of relativeclause-final -ta, -te iru, and -te ita can be explained in terms of the opposition SIMUtLTANEOUS vs. NON-SIMULTANEOUS. Comparison of examples with verbal phrases of stative non-habitual matrix sentences leads to the formulation of a 'principle of convergence', which is later extended to other cases. When the verbal phrase of a relative clause designates a habitual past action, relative-clausefinal verbal forms in -ru, -ta, and -te ita all occur, but these forms connote varying degrees of randomness, two of which are contrasted in detail as the 'true habitual' vs. 'iterative' usage.

Symmetry of clauses and the psychological significance of left-branching.

This paper deals with the questions of symmetry in sentence clauses, and of the psychological significance of left-branching. Texts based on spontaneous and prepared speech, drawn from populations ranging from political speakers to schizophrenic patients were analysed. The results showed that symmetry is not a characteristic of clauses and longer clauses consisting of five or more words to the left or right of the verb, or both, showed a significant tendency towards asymmetry. Measures of left-branching (LB) were thus shown to be independent of or inversely related to measures of right branching (RB). The comparative study of LB as well as RB in respect of individual consistency and psychological significance showed LB to be a discriminative and individually consistent measure and consequently a psychological indicator while RB did not qualify as such.

A Note on Preposed Participles in Russian

This is an informal attempt to provide a simple description of sentences (1) sinejas', mal'6ik vySel 'laughing, boy left' and (2) smejuscijsja mal'c'ik vyel 'the laughing boy left.' Sentences (1) and (2) are each similar to (3) mal'Zik, kotoryj smejalsfa, vysel, which, as a written sentence at least, is ambiguous. The meaning is either (a) the boy, who was laughing, left, where clause is nonrestrictive, or (b) the boy who was laughing left, where clause is restrictive. The nonrestrictive clause of sentence (3a) is close in meaning to smnejas' of sentence (1), while restrictive clause of sentence (3b) is close to smejuscijsja of sentence (2). This correspondence is more clearly seen in case of an antecedent noun which does not admit both types of relative clauses, e.g., a proper noun. Smejas', Ivan vysel correlates with grammatical (if awkward) Ivan, kotoryj smejalsfa, vySel, while unacceptability of *smejus.Jijsfa Ivan vysel mirrors impossibility of a restrictive relative clause following Ivan. Let us formalize semantic closeness of smnejas' and nonrestrictive relative clause on one hand and of smejuscijsja and restrictive relative clause on other by positing a single underlying representation for (1) and (3a) and another for (2) and (3b). And from these underlying representations let us derive formal differences between (1) and (2). A significant formal difference between sentences (1) and (2) is comma intonation which sets smejas' off from rest of sentence. Soviet grammarians call this comma intonation (obosoblenie). Isolation is a necessary feature of (1) and necessarily absent from (2): *smejas' mal'cik vysel is not a sentence of Russian, nor is *smejuscijsja, mal'cik vysel. Are there features of (3a) corresponding to comma intonation of (1) which might justify positing isolation as a feature of underlying representation which it is proposed that they share? As spoken sentences (3a) and (3b) are not necessarily homophonous. It is possible that a longer, or in some way different, pause can separate noun from relative clause in (3a) compared to (3b).x Be that as it

A study of the ability to decode grammatically novel sentences

An experiment was designed to test the notion that English speaker-hearers can successfully decode sentences which are grammatically novel to them. Self-embedded relative clause sentences were presented to S s in spoken and written form with essentially unlimited time for decoding. The factors of semantic constraints and feedback of correct reponse were varied. Results indicated that only about half of the S s could decode the structures without the aid of semantic constraints or feedback. The only condition under which the structures were effectively learned was when feedback was coupled with an absence of semantic constraints.

The Regulation of Some New England Holding Companies

ately labelled them as bad. This flood of literature of exposure was popular and motivated the death sentence clause in the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 to be enforced by the newly-created Securities and Exchange Commission. It is still too early to evaluate the results of the Insull program. The Securities and Exchange Commission has not yet completed the mammoth task of attempting to unscramble the scrambled mess of high finance, visionary speculation, pipe dreams, and organizational concoctions of these disseminators of the