This essay is about the improbable emergence of written language six millennia ago that gave rise to the even more improbable, highly sophisticated reading brain of the twenty-first century. How it emerged and what it comprises--both in its most basic iteration in the very young reader and in its most elaborated iteration in the expert reader--is…

An experiment was conducted to determine whether the deep structure or the surface structure clause is more important as a speech planning unit, and whether syntactic decisions are made during sentence production. Results were discussed in relation to previous studies of pausing and speech disruption. (Author/CTM)

Discussion of text segmenting and comprehension highlights a study of elementary students in Australia that tested two hypotheses, one concerning reading abilities and one concerning information processing skills involved in syntactic analysis. Tests that measured vocabulary, comprehension, and processing skills are described, results are…