Eight experiments evaluated a core assumption of several theories of text processing, the shared resource assumption, which states that component text processes share limited processing resources. Short texts each contained two critical sentences that together warranted a causal inference. The syntactic structure of the second sentence was either…

This examination of Richard Montague's grammar as it is manifested in his study, "The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English" (PTQ) proposes that the theory contains significant flaws and raises fundamental methodological questions about the aims of logic and linguistics. The first part of this discussion presents the…

The authors of a previous paper on aspects of generalized phrase structure grammar respond to criticism of that paper and clarify elements in the discussion. The original paper addressed the problem of expressing relevant generalizations about the order of complements that a lexical item subcategorizes for. (MSE)

Since its inception, proponents of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) have claimed the superiority of the analyses that the theory makes available for certain problematic constructions in English. Two examples of such constructions are (1) rightward unbounded dependencies (including right node raising) and (2) parasitic gaps. However, as…

The papers collected here concern the interfaces between various components of grammar (semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology) and between grammar itself and various extragrammatical domains. They include: "The OSU Random, Unorganized Collection of Speech Act Examples"; "In and Out in Phonology"; "Forestress and…

A discussion of Italian comparatives of inequality examines the use of "che" and "di" in introducing the comparison. It begins by looking at and discounting the semantic explanation for the different structures and then outlines the comparative rules for use of "che" and "di." It examines regular and…

A discussion of passives in the context of generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG) looks at two problems associated with a lexical rule that derives passive participles from active verbs. The first occurs with sentences whose main verb takes an NP and does not have a passive counterpart. This situation requires a more restrictive metarule, and…

A study of problems posed by Mandarin Chinese data for modern linguistic theory focuses on the reduplication involved in the "A-not-A" construction. The Mandarin data and its possible descriptions are used to investigate the question of whether context-free languages are adequate to describe certain linguistic data. These data constitute a case…

A study explored the use of a text-copying task for the determination of syntactic constituent structure. It was predicted that the task would be a naturalistic, reasonably direct, and sensitive psycholinguistic research method. In two experiments, 70 subjects wrote out copies of typed passages. The points where they paused and looked back to the…