The Interpretation of Deviant Sentences in English: A Transformational Approach [Reprint 2018 ed.] 9783110878141, 9789027931122

Table of contents :
PREFACE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. DEVIANT SENTENCES
2. AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES: METHODS
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX A: SENTENCE MATERIAL
APPENDIX B: SCHEMATIC INFORMATION ABOUT SENTENCE MATERIAL
APPENDIX C: WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAIN EXPERIMENT
APPENDIX D: INSTRUCTIONS AND SAMPLE SENTENCES GIVEN TO RATERS
INDEX OF NAMES

Citation preview

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA edenda curai C. H . V A N S C H O O N E V E L D Indiana Series

University

Minor,

189

THE INTERPRETATION OF DEVIANT SENTENCES IN ENGLISH: A TRANSFORMATIONAL APPROACH by

ROBIN S. CHAPMAN University of Wisconsin

1974 MOUTON THE H A G U E • PARIS

© Copyright 1974 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-87531

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague

For T.W.C.

PREFACE

This monograph examines three questions of concern to psycholinguists in the past ten years: that of whether native speakers differentiate degrees of sentence grammaticality and degrees of semantic anomaly; that of whether native speakers perceive a syntactic violation in a sentence to be more (or less) deviant than a semantic violation; and that of whether native speakers achieve interpretations of ungrammatical and anomalous sentences. The first two questions were the ones which loomed largest in current and controversial interest at the time I conducted the study as my doctoral dissertation at Berkeley, for they constituted direct tests of Chomsky's claims about linguistic intuitions of speakers and they promised to provide evidence useful to the transformational linguist in extending theory to deviant sentences. This study and the others reviewed make clear, I think, that speakers can recognize degrees of deviancy in sentences. More recently, the development of this ability in children has been a focus of research (see the references to Scholes, Grossman and Scholes, and James and Miller in the bibliography). The third question was the stepchild of the study in its frankly exploratory cast,.but it is the question that I find the most valuable and intriguing of the three with the advantage of hindsight: that of how speakers interpret deviant sentences. In the original research reported here, evidence is presented to show that speakers do interpret sentences like The witty dog ran down the road and that they show striking patterns of agreement in their interpretations when appropriate analytic techniques are devised. For instance, the phrase, the witty dog is understood as the clever dog - or, more fully, the dog that is clever in a human way. This should come as no surprise

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PREFACE

to readers of sports-page headlines or explicators of poetry. What is important is that the linguistic framework and the analytic methods for paraphrase used here would permit one to construct an explicit formal model of the interpretation process, given additional data. That enterprise is not attempted here in any detail, but it is my hope that the findings and methods of the study will contribute in some measure to a productive and renewed interest in models of anomalous sentences, paraphrase, and metaphor. I acknowledge the counsel of Dan Slobin, Leo Postman, Julian Boyd, and Susan Ervin-Tripp in the course of this research; the assistance of Henry Odbert, Rose Zacks, and Merton Harris in the rating of paraphrases; and the support of a National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Fellowship from the Institute of Human Learning at Berkeley. Madison, 1973

Robin S. Chapman

TABLE O F CONTENTS

Preface

7

1.

Deviant sentences 1.1. Psychological experiments with deviant sentences . 1.2. Linguistic theory 1.2.1. The base component 1.2.2. The semantic component 1.2.3. Extension of linguistic theory to deviant sentences .

11 13 25 26 29 31

2.

An experiment with deviant sentences: methods . . . . 2.1. Experimental design 2.2. Sentence materials 2.3. List organization and booklets 2.4. Instructions 2.5. Subjects and assignment to conditions 2.6. Paraphrase ratings 2.7. Paraphrase classification

36 37 38 41 42 44 45 46

3.

Results and discussion 3.1. Effect of number of violations 3.2. Effect of type of rule violation 3.3. Effect of instruction 3.4. Effect of violation sub-types 3.5. Results of paraphrase ratings 3.6. The relation of paraphrases to sentence characteristics 3.6.1. SR paraphrases 3.6.2. SSC paraphrases

50 50 52 54 55 57 59 62 64

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

3.7.

Summary

Bibliography Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix

A: B: C: D:

66 72

Sentence material Schematic information about sentence material Written instructions for main experiment . . . Instructions and sample sentences given to raters

Index of names

75 89 92 94 96

1. DEVIANT SENTENCES

The properties of sentences recently studied by psychologists derive chiefly from a transformational, generative theory of grammar developed in the last fifteen years.1 A generative grammar is one in which a finite set of rules, repeatedly applied to a finite set of primitive symbols, generates the infinite class of well-formed sentences (wffs) and no non-wff. The primary datum for a generative grammar, then, is the native speaker's intuition about the well-formedness of a sentence. It is only for well-formed sentences that the theory must account, in the sense of pairing a phonological (sound") interpretation of a sentence with a semantic (meaning) interpretation through a structural description generated by the syntactic component. The grammar is said to describe the linguistic competence of the ideal speaker-listener, in that it formally marks relationships among or within sentences detected by the linguistic intuition of the speaker. Under the impact of early generative theory, psychologists focused on how Ss responded to related well-formed sentences. Behavioral indices mirroring the presumed complexity of sentence relations were sought. It was asked, for instance, how long Ss took to find passive equivalents of active or active negative sentences; or how long Ss took to learn or verify sentences in their active, passive, negative, or passive negative forms. 2 Only as a proof (or disproof) of the existence of implicit grammatical and semantic rules was interest originally taken in deviant 1

See N. Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (The Hague, 1957) and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass., 1965) for the formulations of transformational grammar most influential in psychological studies. 2 See for example Clifton, Kurcz, and Jenkins, "Grammatical Relations as

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sentences. 3 The experiments generated interest in deviant sentences in their o w n right: for it is clear that many deviant strings (e.g. Twas brillig, and the slithy toves... or Misery loves company) still retain some characteristics o f a sentence. Viewed in a post-1957 light, Miller and Selfridge's experiments on n-order approximations to English add support to this conclusion. 4 Speakers seem prepared to distinguish intermediate levels of deviancy from a well-formed sentence, and some deviant strings disrupt performance more than others. The equation of a theory of linguistic competence of the real person with a transformational, generative theory of grammar

Determinants of Sentence Similarity", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 112-117; Clifton and Odom, "Similarity Relations among Certain English Sentence Constructions", Psychol. Monogr. 80 (1966), No. 5 ( = Whole No. 613); Coleman, "The Comprehensibility of Several Grammatical Transformations", J. Appl. Psychol. 48 (1964), 186-190;Coleman, "Learning of Prose Written in Four Grammatical Transformations", J. Appl. Psychol. 49 (1964), 332-341; Gough, "Grammatical Transformations and Speed of Understanding", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 107-111; McMahon, "Grammatical Analysis as Part of Understanding", unpublished doctoral dissertation (Harvard University, 1963); Mehler, "Some Effects of Grammatical Transformations on the Recall of English Sentences", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 2 (1963), 346-351; Miller and McKean, "A Chronometric Study of Some Relations Between Sentences", Quart. J. Exp. Psychol. 16 (1964), 297-308; Miller, McKean, and Slobin, "The Exploration of Transformations by Sentence Matching", in Miller, "Some Psychological Studies of Grammar", Amer. Psychologist 17 (1962), 748-762; Savin and Perchonock, "Grammatical Structure and the Immediate Recall of English Sentences", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 348-353; Slobin, "Grammatical Transformations and Sentence Comprehension in Childhood and Adulthood", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 5 (1966), 219-227; Wason, "Response to Affirmative and Negative Binary Statements", Brit. J. Psychol. 54 (1961), 299-307; and Wason, "The Contexts of Plausible Denial", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 7-11. 3 Early studies of the speaker's ability to judge well-formedness of sentences include Hill, "Grammaticality", Word 17 (1961), 1-10; Maclay and Sleator, "Responses to Language: Judgments of Grammaticalness", Int. J. Amer. Linguist 26 (1960), 275-282; Marks and Miller, "The Role of Semantic and Syntactic Constraints in the Memorization of English Sentences", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 3 (1964), 1-5; and Miller and Isard, "Some perceptual consequences of linguistic rules",/. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 2 (1963), 217-228. 4 "Verbal Context and the Recall of Meaningful Material", Amer. J. Psychol. 63 (1950), 176-185.

DEVIANT SENTENCES

13

would then raise a problem: how can a theory accounting only for wffs (and the exclusion of non-wffs) represent the apparent competence of the speaker to detect intermediate degrees of deviance among non-wffs? The answers are two. The first answer is that the equation is not a necessary one, although it may be a valuable heuristic in beginning psycholinguistic research. One should distinguish between a linguistic competence model and a psychological competence model. The linguistic model may or may not choose to account for facts of psychological process; further, it must set up and meet formal constraints which do not necessarily operate on the psychological model. While both models must mark the psychologically real relationships by which a sentence is understood, the operations by which the models generate this information may look entirely different. 5 The second answer to the question of how speakers could respond to intermediate degrees of deviancy lies in amending the theory: several linguists have now suggested theoretical bases for a definition of semi-grammaticality. These may be viewed as potential contributions to a psychological competence model, as well as a linguistic one; they will be reviewed in section 1.2. A closer look will first be taken at the evidence that intermediate degrees of deviancy receive differentiating responses from native speakers. 1.1. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES

Deviant sentences should be distinguished from the deviant use or utterance of normal sentences. (This distinction is an adaptation of Strawson's treatment 6 of the reference of expressions and sentences.) In use, a normal sentence may appear deviant because it is inappropriate (e.g. to say good-bye upon meeting), false under the 5 For discussions of the use of linguistic models as psychological models, see Thorne, "On Hearing Sentences", in Lyons and Wales (Eds.), Psycholinguistics papers (Edinburgh, 1966), pp. 1-10, and Fodor and Garrett, "Some Reflections on Competence and Performance", in Lyons and Wales, op cit., pp. 133-154. 6 "On Referring", Mind 59 (1950), 320-344.

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DEVIANT SENTENCES

circumstances of its utterance, an abrupt change in topic, or an implausible denial (e.g. Elephants don't have ten legs).1 The deviance of a sentence, rather than its use or utterance, stems from breaking the rules governing the construction of well-formed sentences. A sentence is deviant with respect to a particular theory of language. The classical distinctions among sound, syntax, and sense embodied in the generative theory of grammar suggest that sentences can be phonologically deviant, syntactically deviant, or semantically deviant (anomalous). The first kind of deviance will not be considered further here; grammatical deviance, semantic anomaly, and their normal counterpart are exemplified in sentences (i), (ii), and (iii), respectively. i. Healthy young babies infant soundly. ii. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. iii. Healthy young babies sleep soundly. The first studies of deviant sentences were responses to Chomsky's use of linguistic intuition as a datum; the validity of using intuitive data was questioned not on methodological grounds, but on the grounds that such data were not reliable. Maclay and Sleator8 asked 21 5s to sort six kinds of material, six exemplars of each kind, answering yes or no to the question: "Do these words form a grammatical English sentence?" The experimenters (Es) classified three kinds of material as grammatical: semantically anomalous sentences (What do recent stones invest?), sentences linguistically but not colloquially correct (Whom shall I say is calling? - sic), and correct sentences (They finished it yesterday). The material considered ungrammatical comprised semi-random word strings (A keeps changed very when), constructions a bilingual might produce (You can him not understand), and responses to questions (Sometime early in the morning). 7

On the last topic, see Wason, "The Contexts of Plausible Denial", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 7-11. 8 "Responses to Language: Judgments of Grammaticalness", Int. J. Amer. Linguist. 26 (1960), 275-282.

DEVIANT SENTENCES

15

Maclay and Sleator found an overall difference between grammatical and ungrammatical strings in proportion of yes responses, but the results hold out no comfort to those believing in the unerring linguistic intuition of the native speaker. More than half the Ss judged semantically anomalous and colloquially incorrect strings to be ungrammatical, although the Es had called them grammatical. Maclay and Sleator concluded that an indirect measure (e.g. learning time) might do a better job than a rating task in revealing the native speaker's sense of grammaticalness. Hill9 also asked Ss to judge sentences grammatical or ungrammatical. The sentences were drawn mainly from Chomsky10 and 10 Ss served in the experiment. Hill reported little agreement among Ss, although he used no statistical analysis. The Hill and Maclay and Sleator studies cannot be said to refute the idea that a native speaker knows a grammatical sentence when he sees one. They do indicate that with no instruction the word 'grammatical' has a different meaning for a naive S and a linguist. The relatively high rejection rate of grammatical sentences in Maclay and Sleator's study suggests one of two things: either the Ss were not adequately instructed in their task, but could have performed it if instructions had been given; or psychological acceptability of a sentence, under whatever label, is a function of accepted sub-group usage and semantic correctness as well as grammatical correctness. If the latter is indeed the case, it suggests that strings fully normal or deviant only with respect to syntax should be used to test the ability to judge grammaticalness. Miller and Isard 11 were concerned not with explicit judgments of well-formedness but with the impact of rule violations on a shadowing task. Three kinds of sentences were used: grammatical, semantically anomalous, and ungrammatical (word-lists). The anomalous sentences were derived from grammatical ones by re-

9

"Grammaticality", Word 17 (1961), 1-10. Syntactic Structures (The Hague, 1957). 11 "Some Perceptual Consequences of Linguistic Rules", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 2 (1963), 217-228. 10

16

DEVIANT SENTENCES

combination of substantive words: the first important word in the anomalous sentence coming from the first word in the first normal sentence, the second coming from the second position of another grammatical sentence, and so on. Anomalous sentences preserved the structure of the grammatical sentence sets from which they were derived. Ungrammatical strings were produced in the same way as anomalous sentences except that word position was scrambled, obliterating both structure and semantic content. Miller and Isard reported that the ungrammatical strings were more difficult to shadow both in quiet conditions and when masked by noise than the normal sentences. Exact reproduction of the sentence was also impaired for anomalous sentences compared to grammatical sentences, although less so. Presentation of the sentences in unmixed, rather than mixed, lists under masking conditions revealed the same order of difficulty, although the difference between anomalous and grammatical sentences was small. Marks and Miller 12 investigated the role of semantic and syntactic constraints in memorization rather than perception. Grammatical and semantically anomalous sentences were constructed by Miller and Isard's recombination method. Anagram strings were derived by scrambling word order in the grammatical sentences; word-lists (comparable to Miller and Isard's ungrammatical sentences) were formed by scrambling word order in semantically anomalous sentences. Anagram sentences preserved semantic content but not syntactic structure; anomalous sentences preserved syntactic structure but not semantic content; word-lists preserved neither. Two sets of sentences were constructed for each of the four types. Five free learning trials were given Ss; Ss learned one of the four types of strings from one sentence set, and another type from the other sentence set. Three ways of scoring performance were used: all revealed a marked difference between normal sentences and word-lists over trials. Anagram and anomalous sentences fell in 12

"The Role of Semantic and Syntactic Constraints in the Memorization of English Sentences", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 3 (1964), 1-5.

DEVIANT SENTENCES

17

between and showed little difference when a response was scored for correct words in correct positions. Recall of anagram strings was better than that of anomalous sentences when correct words, regardless of position, were scored. The difference was reversed when only a complete string was scored correct, and all three types of deviant strings showed marked decrement when compared to normal sentences. Three types of errors in Ss' responses were analyzed: word intrusions, inversions of words within strings, and bound-morpheme errors (the omission or incorrect addition of prefixes and suffixes). The latter two were considered syntactic errors; both occurred most frequently in anagram strings and word-lists, where syntactic rules were violated. Intrusion errors, considered to be semantic, occurred most often in the strings violating semantic rules - anomalous sentences and word-lists. Marks and Miller concluded that both semantic and syntactic factors facilitate learning, and that the factors may be differentiated. The random recombination scheme for generating anomalous sentences that Miller and Isard and Marks and Miller employed insures oddity of the reconstructed sentences through the choice of low frequency words and differing topics for the original sentences. Whether semantic anomaly is insured is another matter. The technique has at least two drawbacks: (a) the sentence so generated may not be anomalous, although it may sound foolish (consider The witness appraised the shocking company dragon f r o m Miller and

Isard's sentences); (b) the E has no control over the extent and kind of anomaly introduced (e.g. set 2 of Miller and Isard's anomalous sentences seems to contain six anomalies; set 4, twelve). The Marks and Miller study attempted to differentiate semantic and syntactic factors in learning. The anagram strings were viewed as semantically intact strings with no syntactic organization; the comparable limiting case for syntax would be a string of nonsense syllables carrying grammatical markers.13 Such strings were not in13

For instance, see Epstein, "The Influence of Syntactical Structure on Learning", Amer. J. Psychol. 74 (1961), 80-85.

18

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vestigated in the Marks and Miller study; rather, sentences syntactically well-formed and possessing a randomly determined amount of semantic content were used. Insofar as semantic and syntactic disruptions were not comparable, the relative contribution of semantic and syntactic factors to learning cannot be assessed in the Marks and Miller study. More serious is the question of whether the effect of semantic constraints can be assessed at all: whether strings bearing semantic content but possessing no syntactic organization can be constructed is a moot point. To derive semantic content from anagram strings, Ss would almost surely have to recode the strings into grammatical form; if a string is not recoded, its semantic residue is best regarded as associative in nature. The effects of associative relations among lexical items, however, can be separated from the effects of constraints imposed by semantic rules.14 The Marks and Miller study, then, has not clearly shown the effect of semantic constraints; the unaltered anagram strings cannot be said to possess semantic content in the full sense. The alternative to testing limiting cases as an assessment of the relative contribution of grammatical and semantic constraints lies in testing the relative decrement produced by increasing grammatical violations over a range against the relative decrement produced by increasing semantic violations over a range. This requires control over the extent of violation by the E. Fillenbaum made an exploratory attempt to extend the study of deviant sentences from intelligibility andlearningto interpretation. 15 He asked Ss to paraphrase normal sentences, both ambiguous and unambiguous, incomplete or ungrammatical sentences, and wordsalads. He found a tendency for Ss to shift their paraphrases to more conventional forms when confronted with deviant sentences, but cited wording of instructions and lack of paraphrase coding 14

For an empirical demonstration, see the discussion of Selkirk's work at the end of this section. 15 Reported in Fifth Annual Report of the Center for Cognitive Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 36-37. See also "A Note on the 'Search after Meaning': Sensibleness of Paraphrase of Well-formed and Malformed Expressions," Psychonomic Science, 18 (1970), 67-68.

DEVIANT SENTENCES

19

techniques as major obstacles to the use of the paraphrase task. Coleman undertook to define levels of grammaticality and obtained ranking, learning, and recall data on the resulting sentences from Ss.16 The sentences were constructed by choosing ten sentence trees (structural descriptions) dictated by ten randomly chosen sentences. Each tree was then cut at four different levels, the first always being the symbol'S' (sentence) and the last always being the terminal symbols and obligatory transformations applying to them. The other two levels were fixed by the E. Words were then randomly chosen subject to the constraints carried by a particular cut of the tree and the requirement that the number of words in the string equal the number of words in the sentences for which the trees were constructed. The resulting strings were, for instance: he marching a on and its (level 1); nickels a can are come the (level 2); the door should be climb Bozo (level 3); the girl is to be Allen (level 4). Level 1 sentences, then, had no grammatical constraints; level 4, a complete set insofar as the tree was complete. Ten Ss ranked each set of four sentences. Coleman found little difference between the two lowest levels of grammaticality, but otherwise found mean ranking to be a decreasing monotonic function of grammaticality. Short-term learning of the same sentences by nine Ss was measured by the number of one-second exposures needed to reach a criterion of one perfect repetition. Sets of lowlevel grammaticality were harder to learn than sets of higher level grammaticality. These results were also found in a learning cloze test of the same sentences. Five cloze tests were prepared for each level of grammaticality, every word being deleted once and no word deleted twice. Ss first guessed the words on each cloze set, then read the completed set, then again completed that cloze set. Each S saw all cloze sets for all four levels of grammaticality. The number of words correctly inserted increased as a function of level of grammaticality and as a function of prior exposure to the cloze sets of a particular level. 16

See "Responses to a Scale of Grammaticalness", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav.

4(1965), 521-527.

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Coleman's levels of grammaticality are admittedly ad hoc with respect to theory (he notes that his strings are quite similar to different orders of approximation to English), but his results demonstrate the ability of 5s to rank semi-grammatical material under mixed list conditions. The learning measures also reflect the effect of semi-grammaticality. Davidson generated semi-grammatical sentences from Chomsky's 1965 account of syntactic theory, controlling both the number (0, 1, 3) and kind (human, abstract, or concrete) of selection restriction violation. 17 The violations selected in his study may be regarded as semantic or syntactic; in the context of the studies previously discussed, they are best regarded as semantic violations. (Compare Davidson's Astute professors wrinkle abiding courage with Maclay and Sleator's 18 What do recent stones invest? and Miller and Isard's 19 The bolt advocated the gay mathematical officers as instances of semantic anomaly.) Davidson presented unmixed lists of nine sentences to Ss for five free learning trials. He found that an increase in the number of violations leads to a decrement in learning. He further reported that nouns are recalled more often than adjectives or verbs. Simpson, in a study of serial learning of three approximations to English, also reported this effect: fewer errors are made in the recall of nouns than in the recall of adjectives, verbs, or function words, with adverbs exhibiting the most errors. 20 These differences in recall increase as the list more closely resembles English. In an unreported portion of Davidson's 1966 study, Ss were asked to paraphrase the list of sentences they had learned and latency of paraphrase was recorded. A ranking of the unpublished data 17

See "Semi-grammaticalness in the Free Learning of Sentences", unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of California at Berkeley, 1966). 18 "Responses to Language: Judgments of Grammaticalness", Int. J. Amer. Linguist. 26 (1960), 275-282. 19 "Some Perceptual Consequences of Linguistic Rules", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 2 (1963), 217-228. 20 "Effects of Approximation to Sentence Word Order and Grammatical Class upon the Serial Learning of Word Lists", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 510-514.

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21

revealed latency significantly increasing with increasing violations, according to non-parametric tests. Downey and Hakes studied three different kinds of grammatical violation in three tasks - rating, free learning, and paraphrase. 21 The rules violated were (a) phrase structure rules Can adjective was substituted for a transitive verb); (b) strict subcategorization (SSC) rules (an intransitive verb was substituted for a transitive one); or (c) selection restriction (SR) rules (a transitive verb inappropriately restricted to an abstract or human object was substituted for the normal verb). The violations involved rules of decreasing generality in the grammar, although SR rules may be regarded as semantic and hence not subject to the same ordering. Sixteen normal sentences and three derived sets of sixteen deviant sentences were constructed; an additional sixteen normal sentences with the same structure were constructed as fillers. In the rating task, 40 Ss rated mixed lists of 20 sentences drawn from the complete set in such a way that only one variant of a particular sentence appeared in the list. Each sentence was rated on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 (completely acceptable) to 3 (completely unacceptable). Downey and Hakes found that mean ratings increased with the increasing generality of the rule violated. It should be noted, however, that over half the SSC violations included a SR violation with respect to the subject noun as well. In the free learning task, 40 5s studied mixed lists of 10 sentences for five trials. The lists comprised two normal sentences, two of each violation type, and two fillers. Normal sentences were learned most quickly and phrase structure violations most slowly, but sentences containing SSC violations, were learned more quickly than sentences containing SR violations, a reversal of the ordering given by the rating task. Downey and Hakes attributed the greater ease of learning SSC violations to the possibility that a nearly-matching well-formed structure may be more easily derived for such violations than for others. They suggested that the rating task shows a 21

"Some Psychological Effects of Violating Linguistic Rules", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 7 (1968), 158-161.

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reversal of ordering because it does not require the S to interpret the sentence, whereas the learning task does. Such an interpretation of task requirements seems doubtful, for a learning task demands reproduction of a sentence in its original form. The S must retain information likely to be lost when the sentence is fully interpreted - Sachs has showed that recognition of semantic change in a sentence of connected discourse is much higher than recognition of syntactice change, when recognition is tested after interpolated material.22 The 40 Ss who rated sentences were asked, at the completion of their task, to paraphrase the same 20 sentences they had rated. A paraphrase was classified according to the changes it made in the original sentence - e.g. the verb of the original sentence was changed in the paraphrase. The classification revealed different patterns of change for different rule violations, although for the most part the dominant change found for one kind of violation was not a possible category of change for another kind of violation The dominant change in the paraphrase of a phrase structure violation was the addition of a verb; in the paraphrase of a SSC violation, the conversion of the object phrase into a prepositional phrase. Downey and Hakes suggested that Ss in the learning task learn SSC sentences by reference to sentences similar to the SSC paraphrases, simply omitting the proposition in overt recall. In paraphrases of SR violations, lexical substitution for the verb was the dominant change. Paraphrase classification is perhaps more useful when the categories are set up in response to particular questions and when a category is applicable to different kinds of violation. Selkirk investigated the effects of SR and SSC violations, along with a third factor, semantic coherence, on rating and paraphrase tasks.23 The Ss received one of two instructions: either to rate the sentences on the basis of whether they "made sense" (and produce paraphrases making sense of the sentences), or to rate the sentences 22

"Recognition Memory for Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Connected Discourse", Percept. Psychophys. 2 (1967), 437-442. 23 "Performance and Semi-grammatical Sentences", in Slobin and Carrier (Eds.) Berkeley psycholinguisticpapers (unpublished manuscript, 1967).

DEVIANT SENTENCES

23

on the basis of whether they were grammatically correct (and produce paraphrases correcting the sentences). The sentences used were of the basic form 'noun-verb-noun'.The SR violations were created between the subject noun and the verb. SSC violations were produced through the substitution of an intransitive verb for the transitive verb. Semantic coherence was operationalized in terms of high association value. Either the subject and object noun of the sentence were associatively related; or the verb (transitive or intransitive) and the object noun were associatively related; or no strong associative relations held among the words of the sentence. Selkirk constructed two sets of eight sentences, each containing one normal sentense, one SR violation sentence, three SSC violation sentences varying in type of semantic coherence, and three SR and SSC violation sentences varying again in type of semantic coherence. Twenty Ss first ranked and then paraphrased one of the sentence sets according to instructions; the other twenty Ss first paraphrased and then ranked a sentence set. Selkirk found that instructions led to differences in both the rating and paraphrase tasks: the group asked to correct grammatical mistakes corrected few SR violations compared to the group asked to write paraphrases making sense of the sentences. The 5"s ranking sentences on the basis of grammatical correctness ordered them differently from 5s ranking on the basis of whether the sentence made sense. The factors contributing to the former instruction group's rankings are not clear; the factors of number of violations and semantic coherence seem to determine the latter group's rankings. Their rankings do not clearly establish the theoretical priority of SSC violations over SR violations. Rankings were affected by semantic coherence in the following way: a strong associative relation between nouns renders a SSC violation less deviant than a strong associative relation between the verb and object noun in a SSC violation, which is in turn less deviant than a SSC violation containing no strong associative relations. The importance of semantic coherence as a sentence variable was indicated by the changes it governed in type of paraphrase. The dominant change Selkirk reported in the paraphrases of SSC violations was

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the conversion of the object noun into a prepositional phrase; the probability of the change is raised, however, in sentences where the verb and noun are associatively related ; conversely, the probability is lowered when the subject and object noun are associatively related. The studies cited indicate that deviant sentences lead to decrements in perceptual and learning tasks when compared with normal sentences and to increments when compared to word-lists; that degree of deviance may be reflected in the latency of paraphrase production; and that paraphrases of deviant sentences tend to be more normal than the original material. Semantic anomaly has been shown to impair a shadowing task, although not as greatly as sentences both anomalous and ungrammatical. Both semantic violations and syntactic violations impair free learning tasks, and less so than strings violating both rules. More trials are needed to learn strings with greater degrees of grammatical deviance, and fewer words are successfully recalled in cloze tests of such strings. When the number of semantic violations is controlled, more violations lead to poorer free learning; and when the generality of grammatical violation is controlled (excluding selection restrictions), the more general rule violation leads to poorer learning. Semantic coherence and the form classes of the elements between which the relation holds affect ranking and paraphrase of deviant sentences. Retention of nouns in both semi-grammatical material and semantically anomalous material is better than the retention of any other form class. The ability of 5s to judge sentences directly as grammatical or ungrammatical is questionable when material to be judged is deviant along other dimensions as well ; however, 5s can successfully rank order sentences varying in degree of grammaticalness and can successfully rate strings varying in the generality of grammatical violation on the dimension of acceptability when mixed lists are presented. 24 24

Adults' abilities to judge sentences along dimensions of grammaticality, meaningfulness, familiarity, and ordinariness have been further investigated by Danks and Glucksberg, "Psychological Scaling of Linguistic Properties", Lang.

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25

It is still not known whether ratings under unmixed list conditions reflect differences in generality or number of rule violations. Nor is it clear what effect different instructions produce in the kind or ease of paraphrase, or what properties of the originally deviant material the paraphrases may reflect. The finding that nouns are best recalled suggests that nouns may govern the paraphrase rewrite when they conflict with other sentence elements ; the finding that 5s tend to normalize their paraphrases should be quantified and examined for effect of increasingly deviant original material. Such questions were the motivation for the study reported in Chapters Two and Three.

1.2. LINGUISTIC THEORY

Since the deviancy of a sentence is best defined by reference to the rules governing generation of a well-formed sentence, such rules will be discussed here briefly. A generative grammar distinguishes two components of the syntactic rule system: a deep structure component, or base component, which contains rules describing the underlying structure of the sentence; and a transformational component whose rules operate upon the structural descriptions of the base to generate the surface structure of the sentence. The distinction between deep and surface structure is motivated by the superficial similarity in structure of sentences such as (iv) and (v), and their corresponding dissimilarity on another level, indicated by attempts to paraphrase the sentences similarly - (vi) and (vii). (* indicates an ill-formed sentence.)

Speech. 13 (1970), 118-138. Grammaticality and meaningfulness were reported to be factors which could be reliably and orthogonally judged. Danks has also studied the roles of grammaticality and meaningfulness in sentence comprehension (J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 8 (1969), 687-696), demonstrating that latency of comprehension is primarily a function of meaningfulness and, secondarily, of grammaticality; that time needed to correct the grammar of a sentence is a function of both; and that time needed to correct the meaning is a function only of meaningfulness.

26 iv. v. vi. vii.

DEVIANT SENTENCES

John is eager to please. John is easy to please. It is easy to please John. *It is eager to please John.

The structural descriptions generated by the base component are regarded as the input for the semantic interpretation component of the theory; that is, only the information contained in a deep structure analysis is used as a basis for interpreting a sentence. The surface structure of a sentence, on the other hand, is the input to the phonological component of the theory. It is the unique contribution of generative grammar that it attempts to mark formally the psychologically real relationships which speakers detect among and within well-formed sentences. The ability to detect syntactic ambiguity (e.g. Flying planes can be dangerous) is marked by the generation of two structural descriptions in the base component, corresponding to the two readings which can be assigned by the semantic component. The semantic component must in some way account for the speaker's ability to detect semantic ambiguity, semantic anomaly, and paraphrase relations. The extent of these abilities is a matter for psychological inquiry; and insofar as they exist, they become a matter for linguistic description. Such linguistic description will now be examined in more detail. 1.2.1 The base

component^

The following summary is a simplified version taken from Chom25

The notation used in this discussion should be read as follows: A, B, C, stand for category symbols (e.g. NP, noun phrase; or N, noun); X, Y, Z stand for sequences of category symbols. The arrow (->) is a signal to replace the symbol on the left by the string of symbols on the right; parentheses indicate that the choice of elements within parentheses is optional. Contextual features are designated by brackets; the + sign means that the context indicated is a permissible or necessary one; the — sign means that it is not permissible. A — sign affixed before a semantic marker indicates the opposite of that feature when such opposites exist; e.g. - abstract could be read as concrete, - female could be read as male.

DEVIANT SENTENCES

27

sky.26 The base component is made up of two parts: a set of categorical rules, and a lexicon. The categorical component consists of branching rules of the form A->Z, which analyze the category A into a sequence of categories Z; for instance, S->noun phrase + verb phrase. Repeated applications of these rules yield a preterminal string of symbols with an associated structural description - a tree diagram. The symbols in the pre-terminal string are of two types: those that will be replaced by lexical items (e.g. noun, verbs, adjectives) and those that will be replaced by grammatical items (e.g. tense; plural). Thus the symbol N may be replaced by sincerity or house; the symbol Def may be realized by the phonological component as the or that. A category symbol in the branching rules is said to be a lexical symbol if it can be replaced by a lexical item. Each lexical category is mapped into a separate dummy symbol by rules of the categorical component of the form A-+ AA, where A is a lexical category in the preterminal string and A A is a dummy symbol. The application of these mapping rules to the pre-terminal string yields a terminal base string of grammatical items and dummy symbols with an associated structural description. The lexicon is a dictionary of lexical items, with the lexical entry for each item of the form (D, C). The symbol D refers to a phonological matrix and will not be discussed here; the symbol C refers to a complex symbol. The complex symbol is a list of the syntactic features of the lexical item. Such features may be regarded as attributes of the lexical item; they differ from the category symbols of the base in that they are positively or negatively specified. Some of the features listed in the complex symbol of the lexicon are contextual features of the form [ ± X— Y], where X or Y, but not both, may be null. When X and Y are category symbols sharing an immediately dominant category, the contextual feature is referred to as a strict subcategorization (SSC) rule. That is, there exists a branching rule of the form A-+X + Y + ... in the categorical component. Such features constrain the context in which the 28

Aspects,

1965,120-123.

28

DEVIANT SENTENCES

lexical item they mark may appear. Transitive and intransitive verbs for instance, are strictly subcategorized by the contextual features [+ NP] and [— NP], respectively. The verb phrase (VP) can be extended by branching rules of the following form: KP-» V + (NP) + (PP) + (PP) PP-+ direction, duration, frequency, place, etc. As a consequence of these expansions, verbs are not only marked as permitting or forbidding NPs (the distinction between transitive and intransitive rules); they are also marked as permitting or forbidding preposition phrases of direction, duration, frequency, and place. (Prepositions of place may also occur outside the scope of VP.) Similaily, a branching rule of the categorical component permits the following expansion of NP, where S' refers to a sentential complement: NP^(Det)

+ N + (Sr)

Noun phrases such as the idea that animals have souls or the fact that dogs have fleas contain such sentential complements, as do the shortened surface forms the idea of freedom and the habit of smoking. Some nouns permit sentential complements and some do not; these strict subcategorizations are indicated by contextual features in the lexicon. The strict subcategorization features just discussed - strict subcategorization of verbs by NPs and PPs, of nouns by S' - can all be violated by the substitution of verbs or nouns oppositely marked for the appropriate contextual feature. Other contextual features of the form [ ± [ ± P — Q]] constitute selection restrictions (SRs). Here P and Q refer not to category symbols of the categorical component, but to other features appearing in complex symbols-e.g. ± animate, ± abstract, ± human, ± collective, ± event, ± liquid. The context denoted by the appearance of these features as contextual features in the complex symbol is the context of grammatical relations: a constraint, for

DEVIANT SENTENCES

29

example, on the features which the subject or object of a verb may possess. The verb frighten is limited to animate objects. This restriction would be noted by the contextual feature [ + [ Kanimate]] after the entry for frighten in the lexicon. Grammatical relations are not directly defined by the categorical component; rather, they are specified with respect to the structural description of a terminal string by the categorical component. For instance, that NP which is immediately dominated by S (the first rule of the base reads: S^-NP + Predicate) is defined as the subject of the sentence. In Chomsky's 1965 account, nouns are the only lexical items carrying no SR contextual features; only inherent features (i.e. features describing the nouns themselves) are entered in the lexicon. Earlier discussion treated SRs as part of the semantic component; Chomsky includes them in his account of syntax but notes that it is equally possible to include them in the semantic component. Other theorists, to be discussed shortly, include them in the semantic component; such will be the choice of labeling for the remainder of this discussion. The features in question obviously have semantic content; just as obviously, they have syntactic functions in other portions of the base, governing, for instance, the choice of who or which. 1.2.2. The semantic

component

Katz and Fodor, 27 elaborated by Katz and Postal,28 describe the form a semantic component might take. The meaning of a word is regarded as a set of features (semantic markers) applicable to the word. The semantic features are the 'atoms' of meaning; their combination produces the 'molecules' which describe the meanings of words and the 'complex molecules' constituting possible interpretations of a sentence. The theory includes a dictionary and projection rules. The dictionary, like the lexicon of the syntactic component, lists lexical items and the following sets of markers: (a) syntactic 27 28

"The Structure of a Semantic Theory", Language 39 (1963), 170-210. An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).

30

DEVIANT SENTENCES

markers, context free (e.g. + A0; (b) semantic features, context free (these may be identified with the features entered in the complex symbol of the lexicon which are not category symbols, as well as additional features); (c) selection restrictions (these were described in Section 1.2.1.) The entry for a lexical item is in the form of a branching tree: if the lexical item is both a noun and a verb, the syntactic marker + N is followed by the set of semantic markers which define the noun; the syntactic marker +V is followed by sets of semantic markers defining the verb and the selection restrictions the various senses of the verb carry. Within the semantic component it is the SR rules which account for the resolution of ambiguity in a sentence and the detection of anomalous constituents or anomalous sentences. The projection rules operate on the structural description provided by the base component. The syntactically appropriate entries of the dictionary are assigned to the lexical items of the terminal string of the base. The projection rules then concatenate semantic markers at each node of the structural tree, subject to the SR rules. If SRs are not met, no reading is assigned to that node. The projection rules operate until semantic markers have been concatenated for the entire sentence. If there is no reading at the sentence level, the sentence is anomalous; it has received no interpretation. If there is one reading, the sentence is uniquely interpreted; if there is more than one reading, the sentence is «-ways ambiguous (n = the number of readings). A paraphrase relation is said to hold between two sentences when at least one of the readings of sentence A is identical with at least one reading of sentence B; if all readings of A are identical with readings of B and vice versa, the sentences are said to be full paraphrases of one another. In these ways the semantic component formally marks those sentence relationships thought to be detectable by the native speaker. Note that in this account, anomalous sentences or constituents receive no reading; a paraphrase of an anomalous sentence or constituent is then either the null set or the infinite set of anomalous sentences or constituents. If speakers had only the abilities accounted for by this model, instructions to paraphrase an anomalous

DEVIANT SENTENCES

31

or partially anomalous sentence should yield one of two behaviors: the retention or the omission of the anomalous portion of the sentence. A survey of the psychological literature has already indicated, however, that speakers can respond to degrees of deviance, whether grammatical or semantic. This consideration has led to the development of additional theory, to be discussed next. 1.2.3. Extension of linguistic theory to deviant sentences Chomsky has proposed two possible accounts of semi-grammaticality that would assign partial structural descriptions to deviant phrases and sentences such as Misery loves company or Dylan Thomas' a grief ago or Cummings' anyone lived in a pretty how town.29 He notes that "we attempt to impose an interpretation on [semi-grammatical sentences], exploiting whatever features of grammatical structure [they preserve] and whatever analogies we can construct with perfectly well-formed utterances." 30 It is just his point that interpretations are not so imposed on a perfectly grammatical utterance. Chomsky's first suggestion is that degree of grammaticalness is determined by the hierarchical position in the rules of the base of the category involved in the violation. The branching rules of that component allow categories to be ordered in terms of generality; the level at which the deviant sentence parts company with the grammar would then be assigned as an index of its deviance. Chomsky's alternate proposal turns upon the observation that, for any given number (e.g. K) of category symbols existing in a base component, one can define one set of K symbols which is optimal; that is, the choice of those particular K symbols would best reflect substitutability relations in a corpus. If one were allowed a choice of only three symbols (K = 3) in the base component, the set of sym29

"Some Methodological Remarks on Generative Grammar", Word 17 (1961), 219-239. Reprinted in Fodor and Katz (Eds.), The Structure of Language (Englewood Cliffs, 1964). 30 See the Fodor and Katz, 1964 reprint of "Some Methodological Remarks", The Structure of Language, 384.

32

DEVIANT SENTENCES

bols for sentence, noun phrase, and predicate would be a more optimal choice than the set of symbols for sentence, noun and determiner. Similarly, optimal sets of four, five, and so on symbols can be chosen. Foi some finite number of symbols it will be possible to stop; adding another symbol to the set would not materially improve its ability to reflect substitutability relations even in a large corpus. If this last optimal set of symbols has K members, then one can say that the optimal K set constitutes the symbols of the base component. A sentence may be deviant with respect to the rules embodying the optimal K set of symbols; for some optimal K-1 or K-2 or K-J set of symbols, however, it will be normal. An index of semi-grammaticality or deviance can be assigned to each optimal K-J set; e.g. index 1 to the K-1 set, index 2 to the K-2 set, etc. The index for the optimal K-J set for which a deviant sentence is normal, then, can be taken as an index of the sentence's deviancy. This approach, too, yields an ordering of grammatically ill-formed sentences in terms of degrees of deviancy; neither of Chomsky's proposals, however, takes in degrees of deviancy which may be assigned to semantically anomalous material. Nor is the account of derivative interpretations more specific than that presented here. Katz offers an account of semi-sentences which takes in both grammatical deviance and semantic anomaly. 31 He partitions the set of ill-formed sentences into those which are interpretable (semisentences) and those which are not interpretable (nonsense strings). This partition must ultimately rest on the assumption that a similar partitioning of ill-formed sentences can be performed by the native speaker. In view of the difficulties native speakers have in making a binary partition of well-formed and ill-formed sentences, this assumption seems questionable. The theory goes on to propose that semi-sentences are interpreted by reference to a finite set of well-formed, semantically normal sentences which each contain a possible reading of the semi-sentence; the set of sentences is referred to as a comprehension set. The well31

"Semi-sentences", in Fodor and Katz (Eds.), The Structure of Language (Englewood Cliffs, 1964), 400-416.

DEVIANT SENTENCES

33

formed sentences constituting the comprehension set for a semisentence are derived by transfer rules. When an ill-formed string breaks one of the rules of the base, the associated transfer rule determines the form of the well-formed sentence to be added to the comprehension set; or blocks the addition of a sentence to the comprehension set if a nonsense string would result from the rule violation. The theory is sketched in little more detail; it is not possible to predict, from Katz' outline of transfer rules, what interpretations would be assigned to any given semi-sentence. Another linguistic model predicting the assignment of readings to certain anomalous or ungrammatical nodes is that of Weinreich.32 Weinreich does not partition the set of ill-formed sentences, as Katz does; rather, the emission or blocking of an interpretation is a decision of an individual speaker. His model is compatible with Chomsky's 1965 account of syntax, although it revises that account in certain respects. The base of the grammar is similar to Chomsky's categorical component. The lexicon (Weinreich calls it a dictionary) differs only in that the entries for lexical items are triplets (D, C, (i), where n is a list of semantic features and SRs. There is no separate dictionary for the semantic component - nor is there a sharp distinction between the syntactic and semantic component. The rule of the base governing substitution of lexical items for dummy symbols of the terminal string differs from Chomsky's version in that any substitution of any lexical item for a lexical dummy symbol is allowed. The grammar therefore produces a well-formed structure associated with a (possibly deviant) string. The structural description and terminal string generated by the base is the input to the semantic process system, which has two parts: an evaluator and a calculator. The calculator corresponds to the projection rules of Katz and Fodor 33 except that certain rules interpret anomalous or ungrammatical combinations at the cost of noting their deviance. Interpretation is accomplished by assigning the feature carried by the SR (or SSC contextual restriction) to the 32

"Explorations in Semantic Theory", in Sebeok (Ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 3 (The Hague, 1965), 395-477. 33 "The Structure of a Semantic Theory", Language 39 (1963), 170-210.

34

DEVIANT SENTENCES

lexical item it restricts (e.g. the verb frighten assigns the feature •animate to its object); the transferred feature then governs the semantic reading of the lexical item to which it is assigned. (This discussion will not be concerned with differences between the Katz et al. and Weinrich accounts involving the procedures for concatenating markers, although these differences are important to a full evaluation of the respective theories.) The interpretation, marked for deviance in an additive fashion, is submitted to the semantic evaluator; there the interpretation is blocked or emitted, depending on the evaluator's tolerance for deviancy. Weinreich's proposal contains a specific prediction, then, for the form an emitted interpretation of a deviant sentence will take; essentially, if the decision to assign inherent features to nouns is abided by, then it is the nouns which will be changed in an anomalous conflict of features. I drink carrots, if interpreted, will be rewritten as I drink carrot juice. For SSC violations, one could predict that the contextual restriction carried by an inappropriately substituted lexical item will determine the rewrite of the sentence, rather than the surrounding sentence frame: that is, an intransitive verb in a transitive slot would lead to the omission of the following noun phrase, or the rewrite of the noun phrase as a prepositional phrase. Weinreich's theory predicts that nouns will be changed in the interpretation (if any) of SR violations. The experimental evidence on the psychological primacy of nouns34 leads to the opposite prediction : that sentence elements other than nouns will be changed. I drink carrots will be interpreted as I eat carrots. A categorization of paraphrase data is suggested which can resolve the question: does the noun or the sentence element carrying the selection restriction govern interpretation? Similarly, one can ask for SSC verb violations whether the verb remains intransitive or is replaced by a transitive verb. Evidence 34

For example see Davidson, "Semi-grammaticalness in the Free Learning of Sentences" (1966) and Simpson, "Effects of Approximation to Sentence Word Order and Grammatical Class upon the Serial Learning of Word Lists", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 5 (1966), 219-227.

DEVIANT SENTENCES

35

from paraphrases of S S C violations can serve as prologue to a more closely defined notion of 'by analogy' or 'by comprehension set' for psychological competence models. (Katz' contention that speakers can partition the set of ill-formed sentences will not be examined here.) A further prediction derived from both Chomsky's and Weinreich's accounts is that speakers will rate as more deviant the sentences breaking more rules of a given type, whether S S R of SR. From Chomsky's account comes the possibility that a S S C violation may be more deviant than a S R violation, since the former involves category symbols as contextual features and the latter does not (or, in other versions of the base, S S C symbols are more general than S R symbols). The decision to place S R rules in the semantic component renders this deduction suspect, one should note; for Chomsky is proposing only an account of semi-grammaticality, not an account of semantic anomaly.

2. AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES: METHODS

The foregoing review of the theoretical and experimental literature has led to the posing of two kinds of questions: those asking about the extent of Ss' ability to detect deviance, and those asking how Ss interpret deviant constructions, if they do. The ability of Ss to respond to number and kind of rule violation may be reflected in several measures: through ratings of the deviance of sentences; through differences in the way the sentences are paraphrased or through the proportion of syntactically and semantically wellformed paraphrases produced; or through ratings of ease of paraphrase production. These measures should indicate whether 5s respond differentially to degree or kind of deviance even under the adverse condition of unmixed lists. Some of these indices may be affected by the set with which Ss approach the paraphrase task: 5s may approach the task mechanically, correcting a deviant sentence without interpreting it; or Ss may try to make sense of the sentence and write a paraphrase explicating that sense. Two sets of instructions designed to maximize one or the other task attitude can make clear the differences attributable to these sets. In the present experiment, the questions relating to SsJ ability to detect deviance took the following specific forms: (a) when unmixed lists of sentences containing one, two or three violations are presented, do the mean ratings of deviance increase with an increase in the number of violations; and do the mean ratings of ease of paraphrase decrease? (b) are unmixed lists of SR violations rated as less deviant and easier to paraphrase than unmixed lists of SSC sentences? (c) do the number of well-formed paraphrases produced vary with the number or kind of violation in the original sentence? (d) are there differences in deviance ratings, ease ratings, or propor-

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES: METHODS

37

tion of normal paraphrases associated with instructional set? To ask how Ss interpret deviant constructions is to ask which elements or relations in the deviant sentence are retained in a paraphrase and which are changed or omitted. If Ss cannot interpret deviant portions of a sentence, one would expect the deviant portion of the sentence to be simply repeated or omitted in the paraphrase, if a paraphrase is produced. If Ss' interpretations of a deviant construction are idiosyncratic, one would expect the relations between paraphrases and original sentences to be idiosyncratic - nodominant pattern of change should emerge. If S's interpret deviant sentences in a rule-governed manner, producing paraphrases which are normal (i.e. interpretable) sentences, one may ask what governs 5s' interpretations. For SR violations, do the inherent features of nouns or the selection restrictions carried by adjectives and verbs determine the rewrite of a deviant sentence? For SSC violations, do the actual sentence frames or the frames implicit in contextual features determine the rewrite? Finally, are Ss' patterns of paraphrase partially dependent on SV sets to correct or interpret the sentence? These are the questions raised in the experiment to be reported here.

2.1. E X P E R I M E N T A L D E S I G N

Three independent factors were manipulated in the experiment: type of rule violation (SR or SSC), number of violations within a sentence (1, 2, or 3), and instructions. Two sets of instructions were used: an instruction to correct the sentence, making minimal changes in it (I), or an instruction to interpret the sentence (II). The resulting design is a 2 x 3 x 2 factorial with independent sampling (a S appeared in only one of the 12 conditions) and nonrepeated measures (the mean of a S"s ratings was taken as that S's score). Fifteen S's appeared in each of the 12 conditions; each S saw 16 sentences and an example.

38

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SEHTENCES: METHODS

2.2. SENTENCE MATERIALS

The E constructed 16 normal sentences from which deviant sentences containing 1, 2, or 3 SR or SSC violations could be derived. The sentences took four slightly different forms, indicated by the following strings (Det = determiner; A = adjective; N = noun; Vt = transitive verb; PP = prepositional phrase of frequency, duration, direction, or place; of = linkage for surface form of noun complement): Stc. Stc. Stc. Stc.

1—4: 5—8: 9-12: 13-16:

Det-A-N-of-Det-N-Vt-Det-A-N-PP Det-N-of-Det-A-N-Vt-Det-A-N-PP Det-A-N-Vt-Det-A-N-of-Det-N-PP Det-A-N-Vt-Det-N-of-Det-A-N-PP

The SR violations were introduced by substituting an A appropriate to the following N in subject and object phrases (A-N(S) or A-N{0) violations). A third SR violation was created by introducing a Vt inappropriately restricted in subject (K(S)) or object ( V(0)). Sixteen A-N(S), 16 A-N(O), 8 and 8 V(0) violations were chosen. For instance, the normal sentence ( # 2) The courageous population of Englishmen endured repeated air raids for four years became The feathered population of Englishmen terrified abstract air raids for four years in its 3-violation form. The set of inherent features (or semantic markers) selected for violation, with their frequencies of occurrence, were the following (the adjective or verb carried a selection restriction of opposite sign): + animate, 13; —animate, 11; + human, 5; —human, 2; +abstract, 9; —abstract, 7; + event, 2; —event, 2; + collective, 1; —collective, 1; —liquid, 1. The remaining four violations were of the F(S) type in which the verb was restricted to + human subject and the noun subject was marked —animate. The marker categories used in this experiment were taken from Chafe, (±event and ±collective); 1 Weinreich, (¿liquid); 2 and 1

These features were taken from Chafe's 1966 draft of his later book, Meaning

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES : METHODS

39

Chomsky, (remaining markers).3 Chomsky's account was amended in that ± abstract was regarded as a feature of —animate nouns (e.g. probability, table) as well as —count nouns (e.g. sincerity, rice). This change was based on the £"s failure to find adjectives restricted solely to + abstract —count nouns (or other test combinations). Chomsky (personal communication) agreed with the revision. An account of the relations holding among markers was useful in setting up violations, since some markers are only distantly related to others. The provisional account of noun marker relations adopted was the following (the arrow indicates that the nouns bearing the markers indicated in brackets on the left may additionally take a + or — value of the marker on the right):

[ + animate animate count [ — animate

] - » ± human ± abstract ] - » ± event

[ + common ] -> ± collective

and the Structure of Language (Chicago, 1970). Chafe's treatment of such features differs in the published version in that they are treated as features of the verb, rather than selection restrictions carried by the verb. His published discussion of ± state (pp. 95-104) corresponds closely to the ± event marker used here: a verb not specified as a state is a nonstate or event. Chafe analyzes the latter case as further specifiable as a process, an action, or both; + event as used here corresponds simply to nonstate. 2 The feature invoked in the drinks carrots example, "Explorations in Semantic Theory", Sebeok(Ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 3 (The Hague, 1965), 459. 3 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 107, and footnote 18 to Chapter 4.

40

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES : METHODS

— animate — abstract — event

->• ± liquid

Two problems arose in constructing putative examples of SR violations : the first was that of specifying which marker was violated, the second that of insuring that additional SR violations were not incurred, either through violating two SRs at once or through mismatching features more than one step removed in the hierarchy of markers. Reference to the tentative formulation of marker relations solved some of these problems. For instance, ± human was viewed as a subdivision of + animate; the closest marker violating a +human marker would then be a — human marker (e.g. witty dog or long-tailed man), rather than a —animate marker (e.g. rocky man or talkative stone); the latter violations are not minimally distant according to the account of marker relations adopted. In four cases, the requirement of a minimally distant violation was not maintained ; four V(S) violations matched a subject marked —animate with a verb restricted to a +human subject. The setting up of test frames for certain markers (e.g. someone interrupted the X, as a test for a +event marker on a noun) was an aid in the resolution of the first problem. Another method used was the testing of an adjective presumed to violate a particular feature of a noun with other nouns carrying the same feature but varying in others; or the testing of that adjective with nouns sharing non-critical features of the sentence noun but not the critical feature. A complete list of the sentences generated can be found in Appendix A; schematic information about the violations constructed is contained in Appendix B. SSC violations were constructed by the substitution of an intransitive verb for a transitive verb (Vi); by the substitution of a prepositional phrase of frequency, place, direction, or duration inappropriate to Vt or Vi (PP); and by the substitution of a noun not permitting a sentential complement before the frame -of-NP ( N). In each case care was taken to meet the selection restrictions required by the remainder of the sentence; that is, Vi was appropriately restricted for its subject and

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES : METHODS

41

N met the selection restrictions carried by the adjective and verb. In four N violations (sentences 9-12) it was not possible to meet both the adjective and verb restrictions: a +abstract or +event noun forbidding a sentential complement was needed, and no such nouns seemed to exist. These N violations could be constructed only when a Vt violation also appeared in the sentence. SSC violations of the normal sentence The courageous population of Englishmen endured repeated air raids for four years yielded the 3-violation sentence The courageous islanders of Englishmen perished repeated air raids twice. The example, seen by all Ss, was the sentence The girl in the red dress drank the orange carrot in a few minutes, containing one SR V(0) violation of the feature —liquid, carried by the object noun. The sentence is an expansion of the example discussed in Section 1.2.3.

2.3. LIST O R G A N I Z A T I O N A N D BOOKLETS

For 1 and 2 violation sentences, three counter-balanced lists were made up to permit the occurrence of each possible violation within the lists. The three lists for SR-1 conditions observed the constraint that no violation be repeated and that each occur once; the distribution of violations in sentences and lists is shown in Appendix B, II. Three SR-2 violation lists were constructed no that every possible violation occurred twice and only twice; and no particular pair of violations within a sentence was repeated. Section III of Appendix B shows the make-up of SR-2 lists. SSC violation lists minimally departing from the same restrictions were drawn up for 1 and 2 violation conditions. The distribution of violations within sentences and lists is shown in Appendix B, IV and V. Five Ss received a particular 1 or 2 violation list. Three violation lists comprised all possible SR or SSC violations and were seen by 15 Ss in each condition. •Ss were given booklets containing 17 dittoed pages. At the top of each page was typed a sentence, normally capitalized and punc-

42

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES : METHODS

tuated; underneath the sentence was the rating scale for deviance. Beneath the rating scale were two lines on which the subject could write his own sentence; below that was the rating scale for ease of task. The labeling of the first scale (normal - extremely deviant) was chosen after Ss in a pilot study indicated preference for it to a —3 to + 3 scale of meaningfulness. 4 Pilot Ss used only the positive half of the latter scale and reported more difficulty in deciding what the label meant with respect to the sentence. Both deviance and ease scales were always presented in the same direction, since pilot studies showed that reversals to control rater bias created the graver problem of misplaced ratings. The cover of the booklet requested information about the S. The first test page contained the example sentence; the rest of the sentences followed in a different randomized order for each subject in a particular condition.

2.4. INSTRUCTIONS

The E distributed written summaries of instructions (see Appendix C) and booklets to the 5s ; she then read a set of instructions asking the group to write sentences correcting or interpreting the sentences they would see. The special instructions given to the groups asked to correct the sentences are indicated by (I) in the following text; those given to groups asked to interpret the sentences are indicated by (II). Unless the paragraph is so marked, the instructions were given to both groups. The text follows. This is a language experiment about sentences. We are interested in how sentences that deviate from normal English are interpreted. It's not a test of your speed, intelligence, or personality; it is a test of the sentences. You are being asked to take part in the experiment because you are native speakers of American English. 4

This preference becomes understandable in the light of Danks and Glucksberg's later evidence {Lang. Speech 13 (1970), 118-138) on the orthogonality of meaningfulness and grammaticality in sentence ratings.

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES: METHODS

43

You are going to see sixteen sentences and an example, one on top of each page of your booklet. Most people judge these sentences to be deviant in some way from normal English sentences. The first thing you are asked to do is rate the sentence at the top of the page on a scale of deviancy from normal English. The scale goes from 0, which indicates that the sentence is normal, to 6, which indicates that it is extremely deviant. You should circle the number which you think applies. An example of a sentence you might rate as 0, normal, is: the paperweight is on the desk. An example of a sentence you might rate as 1, slightly deviant, is: I drank the paperweight on the desk. An example of a sentence you might rate as 6, extremely deviant, is: ran paperweighting the the. (I:) Your next task is to make the smallest possible change in the sentence you will see so that it becomes a normal English sentence - a sentence that other people would rate as normal. Change the sentence only as much as you need to, not more. Your sentence should be roughly the same length as the original one. (II:) Now assume that whoever produced the sentence you will see had some quite definite meaning in mind - that he meant to say what he said. Your next task is to produce a sentence of your own which means the same thing that you think the speaker had in mind. But your sentence should be one that other people can easily understand. It should be roughly the same length as the original one. The last thing you are to do for each sentence is to rate how easy it was for you to produce your own sentence. The scale goes from —3, very hard, to +3, very easy. Circle the number which you think applies. Now, if you'll fill in the front page of your booklet, we'll work through an example. OK? Turn to the next page. The sentence at the top of the page should be: The girl in the red dress drank the orange carrot in a few minutes. First, circle the number which indicates how deviant you think the sentence is, from 0, normal, to 6, extremely deviant. All right. (I:) Now, think of the smallest change you can make in the sentence to produce a sentence that other people would think was normal. Write your sentence down in the blank. (II:) Now, think of a sentence in your own words that means what the speaker had in mind. Your sentence should be easier for other people to understand. Write it down in the blank.

44

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES : METHODS

OK? Now check your sentence on these four points: (1) Is your sentence roughly the same length as the sentence at the top of the page? (2) Is your handwriting readable? (3) (I:) Would other people judge your sentence to be normal? (II:) Would other people understand your sentence more easily than the one at the top of the page? (4) (I:) Have you changed the original sentence as little as possible to produce your normal sentence? (II:) Does your sentence mean what you think the speaker of the original sentence must have had in mind? If you didn't answer 'yes' to all those questions, try again. Finally, rate how easy it was for you to produce your own sentence. Circle one of the numbers from —3, very hard, to +3, very easy. When you go on to the next sentences, you should work at your own speed. Don't go back to pages; do each page as you come to it. You shouldn't spend too much time on any one page. When you're finished, close your booklet and I'll pick them up when everyone's finished. The experiment should take about 45 minutes more. Any questions? All right, begin. Any questions about permissible changes in a sentence were answered with the standard reply, "You may change the sentence by leaving out words, adding words, or replacing words". This answer was given only three times in the course of the experiment. After all subjects had finished, the E asked them to check through their booklets quickly to see that they had rated each sentence on both scales. Subjects who had failed to paraphrase a sentence were instructed to rate the ease of paraphrase production + 3 , if they thought the sentence normal, or —3, if they were unable to write a sentence of their own.

2.5. SUBJECTS AND ASSIGNMENT TO CONDITIONS

Participating in the experiment were 180 University of California, Berkeley, undergraduates whose only native language was American English. Of these, 143 were paid Ss obtained through the Student Placement Office on campus. The remaining Ss were volunteers from introductory psychology courses who received course credit for participating in the experiment. With the exception of one junior, all 5s were freshmen or sophomores; 86 were male and 94

AN EXPERIEMNT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES: METHODS

45

were female. The ratio of paid to volunteer Ss was determined by the funds available to the E. An additional 16 Ss were rejected during the course of the experiment for any of the following reasons: native bilingualism; nonnative learning of American English; failure to rate any one of the sentences; upper-class standing. The protocol retained for one junior was used to replace that of a S given the wrong set of sentence materials. Restrictions on S participation stemmed from two concerns: that the S possess the linguistic intuition of the native speaker; and that volunteer 5s represent a larger group than psychology majors. The Ss were run in groups of three or four, depending upon how many people signed up for a given hour. The group was assigned to a randomly pre-determined condition, with the restriction that one group be assigned to each condition before a second group be assigned to any condition. Sub-lists A, B, and C of the 1 and 2 violation conditions were ordered in three blocks of four, containing only one repeated list, and a block of three with no repetitions. The assignment of a particular list to a S was determined by the seat he chose in the experimental room. If only three Ss were present, the fourth booklet was added to the last block of the condition; when necessary, the last block was split in two and a fifth block run according to a randomization of the remaining conditions. The last two groups of Ss run were in the same instruction and rule violation conditions but different numberof-violation conditions.

2.6. PARAPHRASE RATINGS

After the completion of the main experiment, Ss' paraphrases, corrected for misspellings where the intent was obvious, were grouped by condition and by original sentence and then typed. Sixteen booklets of paraphrases preceded by original sentences were made up: A, B, and C sub-lists of SR-1 (I& II); A, B, and C sub-lists of SR-2 (I & II); SR-3 (I); SR-3 (II); and similarly for the SSC sen-

46

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES ". METHODS

tences. These booklets were used both to obtain ratings for the sentences and to categorize paraphrases. Three people consented to classify each of the original sentences and paraphrases as normal or deviant (3136 sentences in all). Two of the volunteers were male and one female; one was a teacher of freshman composition, one a graduate student, and one a Ph.D. in psychology. The raters were instructed to mark a sentence normal if it seemed to them a normal English sentence; to mark a sentence deviant if it did not. In cases of real doubt, they were instructed to rate the sentence D* and told that their rating would be coded as deviant-uncertain. A normal English sentence was defined as a sentence that the raters and other native speakers of American English would rate as normal, relying on linguistic intuition. After the raters had read the instructions they rated 12 sample sentences and discussed their ratings with the E (see Appendix D for instructions and sample sentences). They were then given the sixteen booklets, shuffled into a random order, for rating. 2.7. P A R A P H R A S E CLASSIFICATION

A paraphrase was classified as 'normal' if at least two out of the three raters had marked it normal, or 'deviant' if at least two out of the three raters had marked it deviant or D*. Categories were then set up for each sub-type of SR and SSC violation and the normal paraphrases sorted into these categories by the E. Examples of possible normal paraphrases of SR violations are shown in Table 1. Table 2 represents the kinds of normal paraphrase that might be expected for the sub-types of SSC violation. (Here 'paraphrase' is used loosely to indicate the rewrites of deviant sentences produced by Ss, whether or not the rewrites are similar in meaning to the original sentences.) For SR violations, it was asked whether the feature carried by N or the selectional feature carried by the adjective or verb governed the rewrite. Three categories were set up for A-N violations: N governs the rewrite (e.g. through omission or replacement of A — examples A and B); A governs the rewrite (e.g. through the replace-

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES: METHODS

47

ment of N—example C—or the conversion of A into N—example D); or neither or both govern the rewrite (example E). Similarly, three categories were set up for SR violations: the subject N governs the rewrite (examples A and B); V governs the rewrite (example C); or neither governs the rewrite (example D). Both passivization and subject-object reversal of a sentence were regarded as instances of V governing the rewrite. The replacement of V with subject retained was regarded as an instance of N governing the rewrite whatever happened to the object phrase (e.g. example B). A similar categorization was followed for SR V(0) violations, except that cases in which the verb was replaced by an intransitive verb (e.g. example D) were regarded as instances of the category 'neither', rather than as instances of N governing the rewrite. Example A is an instance of N governing the rewrite; examples B and C are instances of V governing the rewrite. TABLE 1

Example Sentence Rewrites for Sentences Violating SR Rules Type of violation A-N:

Example rewrites

The talkative geese followed the antelope. A. The geese followed the antelope. B. The noisy geese followed the antelope. C. The talkative girls followed the antelope. D. The talkers followed the antelope. E. The people and the geese followed the antelope.

V(S): The geese discussed the men. A. The geese watched the men. B. The geese flew. C. The men discussed the geese. D. The men ran. V(O): The geese frightened the pond. A. The geese crossed the pond. B. The geese frightened the animal. C. The pond frightened the geese. D. The geese flew.

48

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES: METHODS TABLE 2

Example Sentence Rewrites for Sentences Violating SSC Rules Type of violation

Example rewrites

N:

The birds of geese followed the antelope. A. The flock of geese followed the antelope. B. The geese followed the antelope. C. The birds followed the antelope. D. The flock of birds followed the antelope. E. The birds and geese followed the antelope. F. The parrots followed the antelope.

Vi:

The geese ambled the antelope. A. The geese followed the antelope. B. The geese ambled by the antelope. C. The geese flew. D. The antelope got into a fight.

PP:

The geese watched the antelope into the pond. A. The geese followed the antelope into the pond. B. The geese watched the antelope run into the pond. C. The geese watched the antelope. D. The geese watched the antelope at the pond. E. The geese at the pond watched the antelope.

Three general categories were set up for each SSC violation: either the actual sentence frame governs the rewrite; or the contextual feature violated determines the rewrite; or neither category is applicable. The N violations were notated 'Ni of N%", if N2 governs the rewrite, the paraphrase is an instance of the first category (examples A and B); if Ni governs the rewrite, the paraphrase is an instance of the second category (examples C and D). Cases in which the original sentence structure lN of N' was maintained through noun substitution (examples A and D) were recorded separately from cases in which structure was discarded (examples B and C). The third category was subdivided into those cases in which both Ni and N2 govern the rewrite (example E) and those in which neither govern the rewrite (example F).

AN EXPERIMENT WITH DEVIANT SENTENCES: METHODS

49

For SSC V{ violations, the replacement of V{ by a transitive verb was regarded as an instance of the first category: actual frame governs the rewrite (e.g. example A). If the verb remained intransitive in a paraphrase, the paraphrase was classified under the second category whether or not the verb was lexically changed (examples B and C). A subclass of this category, Vt retained and object converted to a prepositional phrase, was set up for comparison with Downey and Hakes' data. 5 For SSC PP violations, the actual frame which could govern a rewrite was PP; a change or elaboration of the verb phrase to permit the appropriate occurrence of PP was counted an instance of the first category (examples A and B). If the contextual features carried by the verb governed the rewrite through the omission or change of PP (examples C and D), the paraphrase was regarded as an instance of the second category. If the PP was moved to assume another function in the sentence (example E) it was counted an instance of the third category, neither governs. The PP violations occurring with Vt violations were recorded separately, since correction of either might involve a verb change.

6

"Some Psychological Effects of Violating Linguistic Rules", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 7 (1968), 158-161.

3.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Two quantitative dependent measures were employed in the experiment: the mean of S's ratings of deviance of sentences, on a 7point scale from 0 (normal) to 6 (extremely deviant); and the mean of S"s ratings of ease of paraphrase task (correcting or interpreting the sentences), on a 7-point scale from —3 (very hard) to + 3 (very easy). The Ss also wrote sentence paraphrases correcting or interpreting the sentences they encountered; the paraphrases were sorted as normal or deviant by raters and the normal paraphrases classified by the E. Analysis of variance with an orthogonal polynomial trend test substituted for the factor of number of violations were performed on Ss' mean deviance and mean ease ratings (see Tables 3 and 4). Only the factor of number of violations (linear component) reached the .01 level of significance in the analysis of deviance scores; the linear component of the factor of number of violations and the factor of instructions yielded significant effects in the analysis of ease scores. Neither analysis revealed interaction effects.

3.1. EFFECT OF NUMBER OF VIOLATIONS

Analysis of deviance scores revealed a strong linear trend associated with the factor of number of violations (F = 162; df = 1, 168; p < .01). The linear component accounts for 32% of the variance in mean deviance ratings (corrected w2 = .32). The mean deviance ratings for groups seeing 1, 2, or 3 violation sentences were, respectively: 2.19, 2.90, and 3.36. A similar trend test of Ss' mean ratings of ease of task showed the linear component associated

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

51

TABLE 3

Analysis of Variance in Deviancy Ratings Source

MS

df

Instructions (A) Rule violated (B) No. of violations (C) Linear trend Residual A X B A x C B X C A x B x C Within cells

1 1 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 168

.143 .006 41.196 .661 .164 .271 .034 .104 .509

F .280 .001 162.032*," 2.601» .323 .533" .133" .204

p < .01 for one-tailed test b The interaction of the linear component of C with A or B could yield at most an F value twice that in the table; the Fs yielded (1.067 and .266), with dfs (1, 168), are not significant in a two-tailed test. * "

TABLE 4

Analysis of Variance in Ease of Task Ratings Source Instructions (A) Rule violated (B) No. of violations (C) Linear trend Residual A x B A x C B X C A x B X C Within cells *

df 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 168

MS

F

8.615 .119

14.546* .201

38.691 .016 .000 1.018 .227 .185 .592

130.658*,* .057" .000 1.719" .383" .312

p < .01 for one-tailed test b The interaction of the linear component of C with A or B could yield at most an F value twice that in the table; the Fs yielded (3.438 and .766) with dfs (1, 168), are not significant in a two-tailed test. a

52

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

with number of violations to be significant (F = 130; df = 1, 168; p < .01); the linear trend accounts for 25% of the variance in ease scores. Ease ratings for instruction groups I and II are plotted as a function of number of violations in Figure 1. To check the generality of the trend in deviance ratings, mean deviance scores were computed for each sentence form (e.g. a mean for sentence 1 was computed from the three different versions of sentence 1 appearing in SR-1 lists) in the six conditions resulting from the combination of instruction groups. SR and SSC sentences were separately checked for reversal of trend from 1 to 2 violation levels and from 2 to 3 violation levels. Only one reversal was found in SR sentences; two were found in SSC sentences. The whole list of sentences seems to support the trend effect in deviance scores. These results provide conclusive evidence that speakers can detect degrees of deviancy even under the adverse conditions of unmixed lists, when degrees of deviancy are defined by an increase in the number of violations within the sentence. The findings corroborate Davidson's 1 learning data on SR violations and provide new evidence for grammatical (SSC) violations.

3.2. EFFECT OF TYPE OF R U L E VIOLATION

Neither mean deviancy nor mean ease ratings reveal an effect of type of rule violation (SR or SSC). Failure to find a difference does not seem traceable to the masking effect of some sentence forms over others; comparison of SR and SSC forms of each sentence across number of violations reveal no trend in mean deviance for 10 sentences; a trend in two sentences indicating SSC violations to be more deviant; and a trend in four sentences indicating SR violations to be more deviant. When SSC-1 Vi violations are compared with SR-1 V(0) violations (data similar to Downey and Hakes2 study), the respective 1

"Semi-grammaticalness in the Free Learning of Sentences", unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of California at Berkeley, 1966). 2 "Some Psychological Effects of Violating Linguistic Rules", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 7 (1968), 158-161.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

53

means are 2.300 and 2.231 (statistical tests are precluded in the comparison of sentences by the partial dependence of data). The difference found by Downey and Hakes does not seem present here; it is likely that systematic biases in the construction of SSC violations led to the difference in ratings they report. Failure to find differences in SR and SSC violations could also stem from systematic failures in the construction of SR or SSC violations in this experiment. Since ^s in the main experiment were given the intimidating information that the sentences they would see were judged deviant by most people, their judgments of sentences as normal will not be examined here. The judgments of the three raters who worked through paraphrase sets bring less biased evidence to bear on the question of defective sentence material. If D* judgments are taken as indications of near-normality and scored normal (a procedure opposite to that followed in paraphrase classification), then some violations are rated normal: one SSC P P violation is unanimously judged normal and five other PP violations (one a repeat) are judged normal by at least two out of the three raters. These violations were all cases in which it was possible to interpret the PP as modifying the object noun rather than the verb. Two SR violations were judged normal or D* by at least two raters: happy lamp and saber-toothed policemen. If mean SR-1 and SSC-1 deviance scores are adjusted by omitting the 16 A-N(S) violations from SR data, including the two violations thought normal, and the 16 P P violations from SSC violations, including the six violations judged normal, the difference in means is negligible: 2.319 (SR) and 2.365 (SSC). Despite defects in sentence construction, then, the data reveal no difference in SR and SSC ratings. Failure to find a difference in this experiment may indeed be an indication that the null hypothesis is valid. The linguistic theory is not necessarily predictive of behavior. The use of unmixed lists, however, effectively blunts the discrimination which 5s are capable of making in a mixed-list design; a mixed-list or simultaneous sorting task should be conducted before one accepts the null hypothesis.

54

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.3. EFFECT OF INSTRUCTION Instructions were not a significant factor in deviance ratings, nor

2.0

Instruction I

1.5

Ol

£ o

1.0

0) c/> o a> c o .£> 0 . 5

Instruction IT

0.0

1

2 N u m b e r of v i o l a t i o n s FIG. 1 Mean ease of task as a function of number of violations.

3

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

55

were they expected to be. They did contribute significantly to mean ease ratings (F = 14.55, df = 1, 168; p < .01), accounting for 5% of the total variance in ease scores. The Ss found it easier to correct than to interpret deviant sentences, whether SR or SSC violations were involved (see Figure 1). This finding would be predicted by an examination of task requirements: both groups must detect the sources of deviancy in the sentence and rewrite the sentence; but the interpretation group must additionally produce a rewrite which makes sense of the deviant portions of the sentence. The effects of instruction on the paraphrase task are discussed in Section 3.5.; in general, it can be said that they make little difference in the paraphrases produced at the level of analysis used, although paraphrases under interpretation instructions exhibit slightly more variety than paraphrases under correction instructions.

3.4. EFFECT OF VIOLATION SUB-TYPES

Although no differences in mean deviance emerge between SR and SSC rules, there are possible differences among violation sub-types in each rule condition. SR-1 violations show the following ordering: V(S), 2.875; V(O), 2.300; A-N, 2.181. The F(S) violations included four more than one step removed in the marker hierarchy; omitting these gives a mean of 3.100 for V(S). The V(S) violations seem clearly more deviant than V(0) or A-N violations; V violations, taken together, more deviant than A-N violations. This conclusion leads one to predict SR-2 violations containing A-N and V violations to be more deviant than those sentences containing two A-N violations; such is the case, with the following qualification: the difference exists for A-N and V violations having separate loci in the sentence (i.e. an A-N(S) and V(0) violation or a V(S) and A-N{0) violation), as compared to two A-N violations; the means computed are: V and A-N, separate loci, 3.225; V and A-N, same locus, 2.763; two A-N, 2.600. Little difference is exhibited in V(S) and V(0) A-N violations having separate loci, however: V(S)-A-N = 3.250, V(0)-A-N = 3.200.

56

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Two explanations of the apparent ordering of these data are possible; the first concerns the importance of the grammatical relationship disrupted; the second concerns the disruption of sequential expectations aroused by lexical items in the sentence.3 If the grammatical relationships defined over base structures are assigned indices of relative importance corresponding to the order of the rule introducing the elements said to be related, then the following ordering emerges: subject-predicate relation > verbobject relation > modifier-head relation. One would predict that a disruption of the more important relation would be rated more deviant, and such is the case in the SR-1 data, although the predicted difference in V(0) and A-N violations is small. A sequential explanation, on the other hand, might assign an index of primary importance to the nouns in the sentence. If each lexical item in the sentence arouses expectations about the syntactic and semantic features of the following item, the violation of expectations aroused by a noun would be greater than the violation of expectations produced by other form classes. This explanation would account for the greater deviance of F(5) violations in SR-1 sentences. A decision between these explanations or modifications of either to account for interaction of violations is clearly not justified until systematic experiments have established the data for which they must account. There is also tentative evidence in the data that A-N violations involving different semantic features show differences in rated deviancy: violation of a ± abstract feature carried by a noun produces less deviance than violation of a ± human feature, that being less deviant than the violation of a ± animate feature (means, respectively: 1.733, 2.000, 2.443). Reference to the formulation of marker relations used in this experiment (section 2.3) indicates that 3

Marks reports a similar finding: that disruption of grammaticality early in the sentence through inversion of proximal words (or word and phrase) leads to judgments of less grammaticality than disruption later in the sentence. He attributes this finding to the hypothesis that left-to-right predictiveness is important in sentence processing, an explanation similar to the second one advanced here. See "Judgments of Grammaticalness of Some English Sentences and Semisentences", Amer. J. Psychol. 80 (1967), 196-204.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

57

the greater deviancy of ± animate violations can be accounted for by its superordinate position in the hierarchy. SSC-1 violations show the following ordering of violation subtypes, when PP violations judged normal are omitted from consideration: PP, 2.178; Vu 2.231; N, 2.500. SSC-2 violations, adjusted for PP violations, have the following means: Vi-PP, 2.523; N-PP, 2.594; Vi-N, 3.544. Apparently PP violations are less deviant than N or violations.

3.5. RESULTS OF PARAPHRASE RATINGS

The judgments of the three raters were assessed for agreement in pairs; D* ratings were scored as judgments of deviance for this purpose. Rater 1 and 2 agreed 85% of the time; Rater 2 was the stricter rater (i.e. was the one marking a sentence deviant in cases of disagreement) in 80 percent of the conflicts. Rater 1 and 3 agreed 85 percent of the time; Rater 3 was the stricter rater in 64 percent of the disagreements. Rater 2 and 3 agreed in 81 percent of their judgments; Rater 2 was the stricter rater in 63 percent of the conflicts. The patterns of disagreement reflect both stricter or more lenient rating attitudes and slightly differing notions of what constituted a deviant sentence. A paraphrase was designated normal if at least two out of three raters had judged it normal; the paraphrase was called deviant if at least two of the raters had marked it deviant or D*. The relative proportion of paraphrases designated normal in each of the experimental conditions is shown in Figure 2. The most striking fact is the high proportion of paraphrases that were normal: 84 percent of the 2880 sentences. This is less surprising for the correction group (85 percent normal) than for the interpretation group, which wrote normal paraphrases 83 percent of the time. A downward trend in the relative frequency of normal paraphrases associated with the factor of number of violations was tested by splitting Ss into two groups at the median number of normal paraphrases produced per S (14); those Ss falling at or

58 tn o> o

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

100

to

90

I-SSC

3 o CM tn

a Q)

"o E u. O

c

"O 5 0 o c CP

o 0) Q_

0 Number of violations no. 2. Per cent of paraphrases in each condition judged normal by at least two out of three raters.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

59

above the median were categorized as normal paraphrasers, those falling below as deviant paraphrasers. The actual distribution of normal paraphrasers across number of violations was compared with the theoretical distribution predicted by the null hypothesis (equal n's); aX 2 test showed the factor of number of violations to be significant (X2 = 6.25, df = 2; p < .05). 5s write fewer normal paraphrases at each succeeding level of deviancy. The available statistical test for the data presented in Figure 2 was too crude to detect the significance of any other factor. Two other possible trends in the data are suggested by an inspection of Figure 2, however: an interaction between instructions and number of violations for SR sentences, and a difference in the paraphrases produced for SR and SSC sentences, since no interaction appears for SSC sentences. Groups instructed to correct SR sentences produce more normal paraphrases when only one violation is contained in the sentence; groups instructed to interpret SR sentences produce more normal paraphrases when the sentences contain three violations. This effect most likely arises from the fact that correction groups were told to make the smallest possible change in the sentence; in an effort to follow this instruction Ss may have made too few changes in the three violation sentences. A similar effect does not emerge for SSC sentences: the correction groups always produce a higher proportion of normal paraphrases than do the interpretation groups. This is the only evidence in the experiment that a difference exists in SR and SSC rules; while slight, it suggests that correction groups find SSC violations easier to detect than SR violations when several are present, even if that fact is not reflected in ratings. 3.6. THE RELATION OF PARAPHRASES TO SENTENCE CHARACTERISTICS

The high rate of normal paraphrase production in interpretation groups raises the intriguing possibility that Ss are generating paraphrases in a rule-governed manner. In the simplest case, the paraphrases may be normal only because 5s follow the normal rules of

60

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

English in writing their own sentences, deriving the portion of their sentence interpreting the violation in no rule-governed fashion. That is, 5s may only be able to correct, rather than to interpret, the deviant sentence. Should this be true, the most probable correction, in the sense of being the easiest, would be the omission of the deviant element, when such omission leaves the sentence well-formed (this is possible for SR A-N violations and SSC N and PP violations). It is also possible that the relation between a normal paraphrase and the original deviant sentence is essentially idiosyncratic to each S; or, more interestingly, that the relation is an instance of a general function relating the two. Table 5, showing the percentage of normal paraphrases falling into SR violations, and Table 6, showing the percentage of cases falling into SSC categories, shed some light on these questions. The TABLE 5

Normal Paraphrases of SR Violations : Percentages in Categories

Violation

SR 1, 2, and 3

SR 1 alone

I

II

Total

I

II

Total

N governs" A governs Neither

85 8 8

86 5 9

87 6 8

93 5 1

90 1 8

92 3 5

Ngoverns V governs Neither

72 23 5

61 29 10

67 26 8

82 18 0

58 25 18

70 22 9

Ngoverns V governs Neither

65 15 20

68 17 15

67 16 17

71 8 21

67 12 21

69 10 21

A-N

V(S)

V(p)

° When N governed the rewrite, the percentage of times A was replaced rather than omitted was, reading across table: 61, 62, 62; 71, 67, 69.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

61

TABLE 6

Normal Paraphrases of SSC Violations : Percentages in Categories Violation

SSC 1, 2, and 3

SSC 1 alone

I

II

Total

I

II

Total

58 41 1

60 38 2

59 40 1

64 36 0

55 45 0

60 41 0

PP (with Vt) V governs PP governs Neither

47 51 2

54 43 3

51 47 2

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

PP (without Vi) V governs b PP governs Neither

72 10 18

74 8 17

73 9 18

78 6 16

77 7 16

77 7 16

43 33 12 12

47 30 18 15

45 32 10 14

46 41 6 7

45 44 7 4

46 42 6 6

Vi Vi->Vt vvt° Neither

N

Ni governs0 Ni governs"1 Both Neither

° The row entry for percentages of normal paraphrases falling into the category NP-+PP (a subset of K Vi) for Vt violations is: 22, 22, 22; 26, 39, 32. b The verb governs through omission of PP 18°/o of the time. c When only those cases in which Ni governs are considered, the percentage of times that the structure N-of-N is maintained is, reading across the row: 64, 64, 64; 91, 84, 88. d When only those cases in which Ni governs are considered, the percentage of times that the structure N-of-N is maintained is, reading across the row: 12, 14, 13; 14, 10, 12. percentage o f times that a given category of paraphrase rewrite w a s accomplished through o m i s s i o n (or its inverse) w a s calculated and entered in a f o o t n o t e t o each table. T h e sort o f S S C PP violations omits sentences 7, 9, and 12 containing PP violations in S S C - 1

62

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

lists and sentences 7 and 9 containing PP violations in SSC-2 lists, since the ratings of original sentences had indicated these violations to be normal. In general, the results give support to the notion that paraphrases are derived from deviant sentences in a rule-governed manner; and that the relation between a deviant sentence and its paraphrase is more complicated than that of omission. 3.6.1. SR paraphrases The noun governs the rewrite in the majority (87 percent) of SR A-N cases; the percentage is slightly higher in SR-1 groups (92 percent). The adjective carries sufficient structural influence so that 62 percent of the rewrites governed by nouns include a substitute adjective; this pattern holds true for both instruction groups. For SR V violations, the noun is again more likely to govern a normal rewrite (67 per cent) than the verb carrying an inappropriate selection restriction (21 percent). F(S) violations show a higher frequency of verb determination of the rewrite (26 percent) than V(0) violations (16 percent), but an inverse difference in the frequency of the neither strategy precludes the conclusion that the difference is real. Although the category N governs for V violations is always the dominant one, instruction groups differ in the relative frequency of its occurrence: the greatest difference is exhibited by SR-1 groups paraphrasing F(S) violations: the paraphrases of the correction group are more likely to fall into the dominant category (82 percent) than those of the interpretation group (58 percent). Patterns of lexical change for adjectives and verbs were examined in II SR-1 paraphrases. The original violations were not constructed in such a way that the deviant element (adjective or verb) possessed a near-synonym similar in semantic content to the element but appropriately marked for the critical feature - sentences were not 'good metaphors'. Only four instances of such construction fortuitously appear: witty dog, the satellite shouted, one-member herd, and barking women. In these cases substitutions were markedly constrained by the original element: clever was unanimously sub-

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

63

stituted for witty, sent, relayed, or transmitted for shouted-, animal for one-member herd', and noisy, screaming, angry, or arguing for barking. Phonological rather than semantic resemblance governed substitutions 14 percent of the time, but only in cases where a semantically related element was not a possible substitution: e.g. regular for rectangular-, weathered, fettered, and frantic for feathered-, spy for shy, scanty for sandy. Correction groups substituted on a phonological basis only 8 percent of the time. Adjective attributes seemed to be retained when possible (e.g. gray geese for cement geese; armed policemen for saber-toothed policemen-, intense or extreme for ultimate. The connotative force of an adjective was also maintained, if only in a pun-like way (e.g. glowing lamp for happy lamp-, informal message for strolling message). In the absence of potential relations between the original and the substituted elements, the noun alone or the sense of the remainder of the sentence seemed to determine lexical substitution, rather than the element being rewritten. The evidence suggests that information from semantically deviant as well as well-formed portions of the sentence is used to construct an interpretation, when that interpretation can be cast in the form of a normal sentence. Apparently the nouns in the sentence determine the basic content of the rewrite, particularly when the violation involves a minor sentence element (adjective) rather than a major one (verb). The nature of the other content included in the rewrite rests partly on the structure of the original sentence and partly on the availability in the S"s vocabulary of items appropriate in grammatical class and semantic features which share maximal semantic content with the element to be replaced - the same word, when no violation is involved, or a different one, when violation is involved. The latter part of this conclusion is only tentative; one must first show that substitution on the basis of shared semantic content is highly probable when violations are constructed permitting such substitutions.

64

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.6.2.

SSCparaphrases

SSC violations may be viewed as a conflict between the sentence frame (the actual context for the N, Vi, or PP violation) and the frame specified by the inappropriate SSC contextual restriction (carried by N or V — PP violations involve a contextual restriction carried by V as well as Vi violations). Dominance of the actual frame would lead to a rewrite of Ni, Vi, and again V (in the case of PP violations). Dominance of the context specified by the SSC feature would lead to the omission of N2, the omission of NP (object) or its conversion into a prepositional phrase; and the omission or rewrite of PP. Inspection of Table 6 reveals that in Wand Vi cases the dominant strategy is dictated by the actual sentence frame, rather than that implicit in the SSC feature. The SSC contextual restrictions carried by the verb ordinarily determine paraphrases of PP violations. In those cases in which PP and Vi violations co-occur in the sentence, however, the dominant Vi category (rewrite of the verb) interacts with the PP violation so that the existing PP frame constrains the choice of verb in 47 percent of the cases. There is no theoretical difference in Vi and PP violations from which to predict the observed differences in the way paraphrases are written; intuitively, however, the verb-object relation is a more important one than the verb-PP relation. This observation is borne out by Ss' deviance ratings, indicating PP violations to be less deviant than Vi violations. One would then predict that the actual frame would govern when the frame contained important sentence elements; otherwise, the SSC features would govern. Omission of the deviant element is a possible variant of the dominant category when V governs the rewrite of PP violations or when governs the rewrite of N violations: it occurs only 18 percent of the time for PP paraphrases and 36 percent of the time for N paraphrases (SSC-1 sentences showing a lower percentage of 12 percent). Whether the actual sentence frame or the SSC feature context governs the rewrite, the deviant elements influence the structure of the paraphrase.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

65

The categorization of N violations was checked sentence by sentence over all lists, since it was expected that the abstractness or concreteness of Ni and N2, similarity of meaning of Ni and Nz, or the position of adjcctives might influence the paraphrase rewrite. The position of the adjective bore no relation to the element governing a rewrite. Two N violations (the Aztecs of total freedom and the sleigh-ride on legal justice) provided test cases of the first possibility (Ni concrete, N2 abstract). In contrast to the overall pattern of N paraphrase, Ni governed rewrites 64 percent of the time in each of these sentences; N2 governed 28 percent and 3 percent of the time, respectively. It appears that, in a concrete noun-abstract noun conflict, concrete nouns override the dominance of the actual sentence frame. Sentences 3, 5, 11, and 15 carried N violations in which the two nouns shared semantic content and one noun was a more specific instance of the other: talkative people of students, birds of broadwinged geese, annoyed men from hypocrites, housewives of angry women. There is some evidence that, in these instances, the more specific noun governs the rewrite. Annoyed men from hypocrites runs counter to the hypothesis; Nz governs the rewrite only 31 percent of the time - but the hypothesis would account for the enhanced dominance of the N2S students (80 percent) and geese (88 percent), as well as for the sharp reversal found in the dominance of housewives, an Ni (67 percent). Detailed examination of both SR paraphrases and SSC paraphrases has indicated not only the dominant categories of paraphrase, but also some of the factors which modify or reverse the ways in which paraphrases are written. Among the possible factors giving a sharper prediction of the form a paraphrase will take are these: the semantic features of the noun (in particular, the features ¿abstract and ±animate); the grammatical relation or lexical category markers of the two elements making up the anomalous or grammatically deviant node; the presence in the lexicon of adjectives or verbs differing only in critical feature from those in a deviant construction; the specificity of meaning, when elements

66

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

sharing semantic content are in conflict; the presence of other violations in the sentence. There is little evidence for instructional effects on SSC paraphrases; the largest relative difference between groups I and II is 9 percent involving Vt rewrites for SSC-1 sentences: group II is more likely to retain the intransitive verb. Examination of group l's paraphrases suggests one reason for lack of difference: lexical substitutions made by group I are very similar to those of group II: that is, the lexical item substituted shares semantic content with the deviant element it replaces, where that is possible. Although the correction task was rated easier, Ss were more nearly following interpretation instructions. This task approach may have been caused by group I Ss' interpretation of the instruction to make the smallest possible change in the sentence; or it may reflect the fact that 5s add semantic constraints on their own. The effect of violation interactions in a sentence (2 and 3 violation lists), beyond those isolated, is generally to decrease the percentage of times paraphrases fall into the dominant category, as assessed from 1 violation lists. The foregoing discussion leads to two strong conclusions which must play a role in any psychological model of how speakers interpret deviant sentences. First, information from the deviant portion of the sentence is used in interpretation; and secondly, for SR violations, it is the information carried by the inherent features of nouns which determine the rewriting of the sentence. This is borne out in the paraphrases of the example sentence expanding Weinreich's sentence I drink carrots', while correction groups retain the verb 53 percent of the time, interpretation groups change the verb 67 percent of the time.

3.7. S U M M A R Y

Generative linguists and psychologists have proposed in recent years that the native speaker's ability to understand and produce sentences of his language stems from his implicit knowledge of the

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

67

rules of the language, rather than from associations established among the morphemes in his vocabulary. This proposal has directed attention to the building of models reflecting the knowledge thought to be possessed by the native speaker - both linguistic models, reflecting language relations, and psychological models, reflecting the form such rules might take in a person's processing of speech. These theoretical enterprises have turned upon the recognition that native speakers can distinguish well-formed sentences of their language from defective or unintelligible sentences. The models have been designed to describe the relationships among and within wellformed sentences; they provide no account of how a speaker might understand an ill-formed sentence such as Misery loves company. There is both informal and systematic evidence, however, that speakers understand some deviant sentences and respond differentially to deviant sentences more or less resembling their native language. Those who read poetry know that constructions semantically or grammatically deviant from normal English are often not only interpretable, but also more striking than their normal counterparts might be. From psychological literature come the findings that sentences deviant with respect to semantic or grammatical rules impair perception, learning, and recall - but not as greatly as strings with no semantic or syntactic organization. It is known that an increase in the number of semantic rule violations affects learning and paraphrase latencies; and that an increase in the grammatical deviancy of a sentence affects learning and ranking tasks. Interpretations of deviant sentences are often themselves normal. The evidence suggests that speakers may have more extensive linguistic abilities than the models credit to them. Linguistic theorists have amended theory in two ways to provide for the possibility that speakers differentiate degrees of deviancy and understand some deviant sentences. Several algorithms have been advanced which would assign an index of deviancy to sentences: the proposals of Chomsky assign indices for grammatical deviance only; those of Katz and Weinreich assign indices to both semantically and grammatically deviant sentences. These algorithms only predict an ordering of ill-formed sentences; they do not indicate

68

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

which sentences will be interpreted or how a speaker could interpret them. Chomsky and Katz indicate only briefly how theory might account for interpretation of deviant sentences: Chomsky proposes that interpretation might be accomplished by analogy with well-formed sentences; Katz' proposal is similar - well-formed sentences must provide the basis for interpretation. Katz suggests, however, that rules should be written which would derive the wellformed sentences (each containing a possible reading of the deviant sentence) from the rule violations involved in the deviant sentence. Weinrech advances a more explicit account of how a deviant sentence might be interpreted: essentially, he suggests that rules of combination override the normal meaning of sentence elements. Semantic rules of combination (selection restrictions) are carried by adjectives and verbs; thus the speakers' interpretation would change the noun, when a noun-adjective or noun-verb combination is semantically deviant. Grammatical rules of combination (strict subcategorization features) are carried by nouns and verbs, among other elements; Weinreich predicts that the contextual rules they carry will override the influence of the inappropriate sentence context in which they might occur. Theoretical accounts of the interpretation or detection of deviancy in sentences cannot be fully developed, however, until the speaker's abilities in these two spheres are more clearly delineated. Do speakers still differentiate degrees of semantic or syntactic deviancy when they encounter unmixed lists of deviant sentences? Does the fact that a violation is semantic rather than syntactic make it seem less deviant to the speaker? How do speakers interpret sentences grammatically or semantically deviant - what information in the sentence determines an interpretation? These are the questions to which the experiment reported was addressed. Three factors were investigated: that of type of rule violation (selection restriction - semantic; or strict subcategorization syntactic); that of number of violations within a sentence (1, 2, or 3); and that of instructions. The Ss were asked to write sentences correcting the sentences they saw, making the smallest possible change; or to write sentences which meant the same thing as the

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

69

deviant sentences, but would be easier for other people to understand. The design took the form of a 2 x 3 x 2 factorial design with 15 Ss assigned to each condition; independent sampling and non-repeated measures were used. The 5"s saw 16 sentences each containing the same kind and number of violations: e.g. The feathered population of Englishmen endured abstract air raids for four years or The courageous islanders of Englishman endured repeated air raids into the street (two semantic and two syntactic violations, respectively). The Ss rated each sentence on a 7-point scale of deviancy from normal English, wrote a sentence correcting or interpreting the deviant sentence, and then rated the ease of the task on a 7-point scale. The paraphrases were sorted as deviant or normal by three raters and the normal paraphrases analyzed for their relations to original sentences by the E. Deviance ratings strongly reflected the number of violations in the sentences; the linear component of that factor accounted for 32 percent of the variance in mean deviance scores. Even under the adverse conditions of unmixed lists, 5s can explicitly respond to degrees of semantic or syntactic deviancy. Furthermore, -Ss rate sentences containing more violations as harder to correct or interpret; and they produce fewer normal paraphrases for sentences containing more violations. Whether the rule violated was semantic or syntactic makes little difference in rated deviance or ease of paraphrase task, although the proportion of normal paraphrases produced suggests that Ss detect syntactic violations more easily than semantic violations, when the sentences contain three violations. The data suggest that other factors also contribute to the Ss' ratings of deviance. The importance of the grammatical relation which is disrupted by violation makes a difference: the disruption of the modifier-head relation is less deviant than disruption of the subject-predicate relation. The nature of the semantic violation also appears to play a role in rated deviance: the violation of a more general semantic category - e.g. animate - is more deviant than the violations of subdivisions of that category (e.g. human or abstract). The violation of the grammatical restrictions (strict subcategorization features) carried by nouns or by verbs upon nouns is more

70

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

deviant than the violation of the restrictions carried by verbs upon prepositional phrases. The Ss rate the correction of deviant sentences an easier task than that of interpretation, but the paraphrases produced by the two groups are strikingly similar and give evidence of being interpretations, rather than corrections, of the deviant sentences. Most strikingly, a high proportion (82 percent) of the paraphrases are normal sentences - normal sentences which reflect information from the deviant portion of the original sentences, most often the same information across Ss. The nouns in the sentence, particularly the concrete nouns, carry the most weight in determining a paraphrase; nouns are retained at the expense of adjective and verb changes in the majority of cases. In general, it may be said that the violation of a contextual restriction (i.e. a rule of combination), whether the restriction is semantic or syntactic, leads to the substitution of elements bearing other contextual restrictions, rather than a change of the deviant context. There is one exception to this generalization: it is false for the grammatical restrictions on prepositional phrases carried by verbs. With this exception, the findings of the experiment are the reverse of Weinreich's predictions; actual context rather than rule-implied context determines the rewriting of a sentence. The interpretation of a deviant sentence is not accomplished through revising the meanings of words to suit the rules; it is accomplished through selecting words carrying more appropriate rules. It appears that Ss> will agree in their paraphrases, in the sense of their paraphrases meaning the same thing, only when words exist in the language which not only carry the appropriate rule of combination, but which also share semantic content with the deviant sentence. For instance, Ss will uniformly interpret witty dog as clever dog. Tentatively, one may say that a deviant sentence is interpretable in a full sense only when the semantic organization of a language permits it to be. The form which a rewrite of a deviant sentence will take, however, is predictable in general outline even when this condition is not met. If theory is ultimately to describo the full linguistic competence of the native speaker, including his appreciation of poetry, his use of

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

71

metaphor, his way of comprehending the only partially intelligible speech of a child and the often ill-formed sentences of his colleagues, it must turn to evidence from deviant, as well as normal, sentences. The experiment reported suggests that interpretation of deviant sentences is accomplished in a predictable manner; that the predictions may be related to the speaker's competence with respect to normal sentences; and that systematic semantic investigation may establish the behavior as rule-governed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chafe, W., Meaning and the Structure of Language (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970). Chomsky, N., Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957). , "Some Methodological Remarks on Generative Grammar", Word 17 (1961), 219-239. , Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965). Clifton, C., Jr., I. Kurcz, and J. Jenkins, "Grammatical Relations as Determinants of Sentence Similarity", / . Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 112-117. Clifton, C., Jr., and P. Odom, "Similarity Relations among Certain English Sentence Constructions", Psychol. Monogr. 80 (1966), No. 5 ( = Whole No. 613). Coleman,E., "The Comprehensibility of Several Grammatical Transformations", J. Appl. Psychol. 48 (1964a), 186-190. , "Learning of prose written in four grammatical transformations", J. Appl. Psychol. 49 (1964b), 332-341. , "Responses to a Scale of Grammaticalness", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4(1965), 521-527. Danks, J. H., "Grammaticality and Meaningfulness in the Comprehension of Sentences", / . Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 8 (1969), 687-696. Danks, J. H., and Glucksberg, S. "Psychological Scaling of Linguistic Properties", Lang. Speech 13 (1970), 118-138. Davidson, R., "Semi-grammaticalness in the Free Learning of Sentences", unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 1966). Downey, R., and D. Hakes, "Some Psychological Effects of Violating Linguistic Rules", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 7 (1968), 158-161. Epstein, W., The Influence of Syntactical Structure on Learning", Amer. J. Psychol. 74 (1961), 80-85. Fillenbaum, S., Reported in Fifth Annual Report of the Center for Cognitive Studies (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1965), 36-37. , "A Note on the 'Search after Meaning': Sensibleness of Paraphrase of Wellformed and Malformed Expressions," Psychonomic Science, 18 (1970), 67-68. Fodor, J. and M. Garrett, "Some Reflections on Competence and Performance". In J. Lyons and R. Wales (Eds.), Psycholinguistics Papers: The Proceedings of the 1966 Edinburgh conference (Edinburgh: University Press, 1966), 133154.

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Fodor, J., and Katz, J. (Eds.), The Structure ofLanguage: Readings in the Philosophy ofLanguage (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964). Gough, P., "Grammatical Transformations and Speed of Understanding", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 107-111. Grossman, Pamela F., and Robert J. Scholes, "The Role of Grammaticality and Intonation in Imitations of Word Strings by Hebrew Speaking Children", Communication Sciences Laboratory Quarterly Report (University of Florida, 1971), 9(1), 21-32. Hill, A., "Grammaticality", Word\l (1961), 1-10. James, S. L., and J. F. Miller, "Children's Awareness of Semantic Constraints in Sentences", Child Development, 44 (1973), 69-76. Katz, J., "Semi-sentences", in J. Fodor and J. Katz (Eds.), The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language (Englewood-Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 400-416. Katz, J., and J. Fodor, "The Structure of a Semantic Theory", Language 39 (1963), 170-210. Katz, J., and P. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1964). Maclay, H., and M. Sleator, "Responses to Language: Judgments of Grammaticalness", Int. J. Amer. Linguist. 26 (1960), 275-282. McMahon, E., "Grammatical Analysis as Part of Understanding", unpublished doctoral dissertation (Harvard University, 1963). Marks, L., "Judgments of Grammaticalness of Some English Sentences and Semi-sentences", Amer. J. Psychol. 80 (1967), 196-204. Marks, L., and G. Miller, "The Role of Semantic and Syntactic Constraints in the Memorization of English Sentences", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 3 (1964), 1-5. Mehler, J., "Some Effects of Grammatical Transformations on the Recall of English Sentences", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 2 (1963), 346-351. Miller, G., and S. Isard, "Some Perceptual Consequences of Linguistic Rules", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 2 (1963), 217-228. Miller, G., and K. McKean, "A Chronometric Study of Some Relations between Sentences", Quart. J. Exp. Psychol. 16 (1964), 297-308. Miller, G., K. McKean, and D. Slobin, "The Exploration of Transformations by Sentence Matching", in G. Miller, "Some Psychological Studies of Grammar", Amer. Psychologist 17 (1962), 748-762. Miller, G., and J. Selfridge, "Verbal Context and the Recall of Meaningful Material", Amer. J. Psychol. 63 (1950), 176-185. Sachs, J., "Recognition Memory for Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Connected Discourse", Percept. Psychophys. 2 (1967), 437-442. Savin, H., and E. Perchonock, "Grammatical Structure and the Immediate Recall of English Sentences", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 348-353. Scholes, R. J., "The Role of Grammaticality in the Imitation of Word Strings by Children and Adults", / . Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 8 (1969), 225-228. Selkirk, E., "Performance and Semi-grammatical Sentences", in D. Slobin and S. Carrier (Eds.), BerkeleyPsycholinguisticPapers, (unpublished manuscript, 1967).

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Simpson, W., "Effects of Approximation to Sentence Word Order and Grammatical Class Upon the Serial Learning of Word Lists", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 510-514. Slobin, D., "Grammatical Transformations and Sentence Comprehension in Childhood and Adulthood", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 5 (1966), 219-227. Slobin, D., and S. Carrier (Eds.) Berkeley Psycholinguistic Papers (unpublished manuscript, 1967). Strawson, P., "On Referring", Mind $9 (1950), 320-344. Thorne, J., "On Hearing Sentences", in J. Lyons and R. Wales (Eds)., Psycholinguistics Papers: The Proceedings of the 1966 Edinburgh Conference (Edinburgh: University Press, 1966), 1-10. Wason, P., "Response to Affirmative and Negative Binary Statements, Brit. J. Psychol. 54 (1961), 299-307. , "The Contexts of Plausible Denial", J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4 (1965), 7-11. Weinreich, U., "Explorations in Semantic Theory", in T. Sebeok (Ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics Vol. 3 (The Hague: Mouton, 1965), 395-477.

APPENDIX A: SENTENCE MATERIAL

SELECTION RESTRICTION: ONE VIOLATION, LIST A.

1. The copper scarcity of food drove the deer herd toward the valley. 2. The feathered population of Englishmen endured repeated air raids for four years. 3. The talkative committee of students scattered a sympathetic advisor once a year. 4. The subjective probability of a jackpot determined rectangular losses in a casino. 5. The flock of broad-winged geese poured the prong-horned antelope into the water. 6. The idea of total freedom survived wrinkled suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the happy lamp frightened the timid giraffe twice. 8. The sight of the fundamental mobile surprised the long-tailed monkeys in the zoo. 9. The spherical satellite shouted a brief message to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The daily newspaper printed a latent column on baseball for a year. 11. Mashed sincerity elicited annoyed reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The objective water created difficult problems in construction several times. 13. The witty dog climbed the distance to the tall mountain toward the west.

76

APPENDIX

14. The painted event interrupted the lecture on legal justice three times. 15. The uniformed policemen elicited the crowd of angry women twice. 16. The tropical heat melted the patch of legal snow on the windowsill.

SELECTION RESTRICTION: ONE VIOLATION, LIST B.

1. The impending scarcity of food drove the one-member herd toward the valley. 2. The courageous population of Englishmen endured abstract air raids for four years. 3. The duck-billed committee of students elected a sympathetic advisor once a year. 4. The subjective probability of a jackpot amazed financial losses in a casino. 5. The flock of cement geese followed the prong-horned antelope into the water. 6. The idea of total freedom denounced tyrannical suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the brass lamp frightened the argumentative giraffe twice. 8. The sight of the green mobile surprised the paper monkeys in the zoo. 9. The shy satellite beamed a brief message to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The daily newspaper amused a short column on baseball for a year. 11. Complete sincerity elicited sandy reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The muddy water created waxy problems in construction several times. 13. The rabid dog climbed the distance to the playful mountain toward the west.

APPENDIX

77

14. The unexpected event interrupted the lecture on grainy justice three times. 15. The saber-toothed policemen dispersed the crowd of angry women twice. 16. The tropical heat sniffed the patch of packed snow on the window-sill.

SELECTION RESTRICTION: ONE VIOLATION, LIST C.

1. The impending scarcity of food threw the deer herd toward the valley. 2. The courageous population of Englishmen terrified repeated air raids for four years. 3. The talkative committee of students elected a furry advisor once a year. 4. The green probability of a jackpot determined financial losses in a casino. 5. The flock of broad-winged geese followed the electric antelope into the water. 6. The idea of wet freedom survived tyrannical suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the brass lamp heard the timid giraffe twice. 8. The sight of the green mobile ate the long-tailed monkeys in the zoo. 9. The spherical satellite beamed a strolling message to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The total newspaper printed a short column on baseball for a year. 11. Complete sincerity discussed annoyed reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The muddy water melted difficult problems in construction several times. 13. The rabid dog stopped the distance to the tall mountain toward the west.

78

APPENDIX

14. The unexpected event arranged the lecture on legal justice three times. 15. The uniformed policemen dispersed the crowd of barking women twice. 16. The ultimate heat melted the patch of packed snow on the window-sill.

SELECTION RESTRICTION: TWO VIOLATIONS, LIST A.

1. The copper scarcity of food drove the one-member herd toward the valley. 2. The feathered population of Englishmen terrified repeated air raids for four years. 3. The duck-billed committee of students elected a furry advisor once a year. 4. The subjective probability of a jackpot amazed rectangular losses in a casino. 5. The flock of cement geese followed the electric antelope into the water. 6. The idea of wet freedom denounced tyrannical suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the happy lamp frightened the argumentative giraffe twice. 8. The sight of the green mobile ate the paper monkeys in the zoo. 9. The shy satellite beamed a strolling message to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The total newspaper amused a short column on baseball for a year. 11. Mashed sincerity elicited sandy reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The muddy water melted waxy problems in construction several times. 13. The witty dog climbed the distance to the playful mountain toward the west.

APPENDIX

79

14. The painted event arranged the lecture on legal justice three times. 15. The saber-toothed policemen dispersed the crowd of barking women twice. 16. The tropical heat sniffed the patch of legal snow on the windowsill.

SELECTION RESTRICTION: TWO VIOLATIONS, LIST B.

1. The copper scarcity of food threw the deer herd toward the valley. 2. The courageous population of Englishmen terrified abstract air raids for four years. 3. The duck-billed committee of students scattered a sympathetic advisor once a year. 4. The green probability of a jackpot determined rectangular losses in a casino. 5. The flock of cement geese poured the prong-horned antelope into the water. 6. The idea of total freedom denounced wrinkled suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the happy lamp heard the timid giraffe twice. 8. The sight of the fundamental mobile surprised the paper monkeys in the zoo. 9. The shy satellite shouted a brief message to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The daily newspaper amused a latent column on baseball for a year. 11. Mashed sincerity discussed annoyed reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The objective water created waxy problems in construction several times. 13. The witty dog stopped the distance to the tall mountain toward the west.

80

APPENDIX

14. The unexpected event arranged the lecture on grainy justice three times. 15. The saber-toothed policemen elicited the crowd of angry women twice. 16. The ultimate heat melted the patch of legal snow on the windowsill.

SELECTION RESTRICTION: TWO VIOLATIONS, LIST C.

1. The impending scarcity of food threw the one-member herd toward the valley. 2. The feathered population of Englishmen endured abstract air raids for four years. 3. The talkative committee of students scattered a furry advisor once a year. 4. The green probability of a jackpot amazed financial losses in a casino. 5. The flock of broad-winged geese poured the electric antelope into the water. 6. The idea of wet freedom survived wrinkled suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the brass lamp heard the argumentative giraffe twice. 8. The sight of the fundamental mobile ate the long-tailed monkeys in the zoo. 9. The spherical satellite shouted a strolling message to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The total newspaper printed a latent column on baseball for a year. 11. Complete sincerity discussed sandy reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The objective water melted difficult problems in construction several times. 13. The rabid dog stopped the distance to the playful mountain toward the west.

APPENDIX

81

14. The painted event interrupted the lecture on grainy justice three times. 15. The uniformed policemen elicited the crowd of barking women twice. 16. The ultimate heat sniffed the patch of packed snow on the window-sill.

SELECTION RESTRICTION: THREE VIOLATION LIST.

1. The copper scarcity of food threw the one-member herd toward the valley. 2. The feathered population of Englishmen terrified abstract air raids for four years. 3. The duck-billed committee of students scattered a furry advisor once a year. 4. The green probability of a jackpot amazed rectangular losses in a casino. 5. The flock of cement geese poured the electric antelope into the water. 6. The idea of wet freedom denounced wrinkled suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the happy lamp heard the argumentative giraffe twice. 8. The sight of the fundamental mobile ate the paper monkeys in the zoo. 9. The shy satellite shouted a strolling message to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The total newspaper amused a latent column on baseball for a year. 11. Mashed sincerity discussed sandy reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The objective water melted waxy problems in construction several times. 13. The witty dog stopped the distance to the playful mountain toward the west.

82

APPENDIX

14. The painted event arranged the lecture on grainy justice three times. 15. The saber-toothed policemen elicited the crowd of barking women twice. 16. The ultimate heat sniffed the patch of legal snow on the window-sill.

STRICT SUBCATEGORIZATION: ONE VIOLATION, LIST A.

1. The impending scarcity of food lasted the deer herd toward the valley. 2. The courageous islanders of Englishmen endured repeated air raids for four years. 3. The talkative committee of students rioted a sympathetic advisor once a year. 4. The subjective probability of a jackpot determined financial losses into a casino. 5. The flock of broad-winged geese ambled the prong-horned antelope toward the water. 6. The Aztecs of total freedom survived tyrannical suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the brass lamp appeared the timid giraffe twice. 8. The desk of the green mobile surprised the long-tailed monkeys in the zoo. 9. The spherical satellite soared a brief message to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The daily newspaper printed a short column on baseball toward the stadium. 11. Complete sincerity resulted annoyed reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The muddy water created difficult problems in construction eastward. 13. The rabid dog trembled the distance to the tall mountain toward the west.

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14. The unexpected event interrupted the sleighride on legal justice three times. 15. The uniformed policemen blustered the crowd of angry women twice. 16. The tropical heat melted the patch of packed snow several times.

STRICT SUBCATEGORIZATION: ONE VIOLATION, LIST B.

1. The impending scarcity of food drove the deer herd on the plateau. 2. The courageous population of Englishmen endured repeated air raids into the street. 3.- The talkative committee of students elected a sympathetic advisor for days. 4. The subjective person of a jackpot determined financial losses in a casino. 5. The flock of broad-winged geese followed the prong-horned antelope at the pond. 6. The idea of total freedom survived tyrannical suppression into the country. 7. The typewriter of the brass lamp frightened the timid giraffe twice. 8. The sight of the green mobile persisted the long-tailed monkeys in the zoo. 9. The spherical satellite beamed a brief message to Johnson by the bus stop. 10. The daily newspaper arrived a short column on baseball for a year. 11. Complete sincerity elicited annoyed reactions from hypocrites into the room. 12. The muddy water surged difficult problems in construction several times. 13. The rabid dog climbed the fence to the tall mountain toward the west.

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14. The unexpected event occurred the lecture on legal justice three times. 15. The uniformed policemen dispersed the crowd of angry women for five minutes. 16. The tropical heat melted the butter of packed snow on the window-sill.

STRICT SUBCATEGORIZATION: ONE VIOLATION, LIST C.

1. The impending winter of food drove the deer herd toward the valley. 2. The courageous population of Englishmen perished repeated air raids in London. 3. The talkative people of students elected a sympathetic advisor once a year. 4. The subjective person of a jackpot determined financial losses in a casino. 5. The birds of broad-winged geese followed the prong-horned antelope toward the water. 6. The idea of total freedom lingered tyrannical suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the brass lamp frightened the timid giraffe toward the tree. 8. The desk of the green mobile surprised the long-tailed monkeys in the zoo. 9. The spherical satellite beamed a brief message to Johnson by the bus stop. 10. The daily newspaper arrived a short column on baseball for a year. 11. Complete sincerity resulted annoyed reactions from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The muddy water created difficult problems in construction eastward. 13. The rabid dog climbed the fence to the tall mountain toward the west.

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14. The unexpected event interrupted the lecture on legal justice toward the podium. 15. The uniformed policemen dispersed the housewives of angry women twice. 16. The tropical heat melted the butter of packed snow on the window-sill.

STRICT SUBCATEGORIZATION: TWO VIOLATIONS, LIST A.

1. The impending scarcity of food lasted the deer herd three times. 2. The courageous islanders of Englishmen perished repeated air raids in London. 3. The talkative committee of students rioted a sympathetic advisor toward the campus. 4. The subjective person of a jackpot rose financial losses in a casino. 5. The flock of broad-winged geese ambled the prong-horned antelope at the intersection. 6. The Aztecs of total freedom lingered tyrannical suppression for centuries. 7. The picture of the brass lamp appeared the timid giraffe into the water. 8. The desk of the green mobile persisted the long-tailed monkeys in the zoo. 9. The spherical satellite soared a brief message to Johnson on the field. 10. The daily newspaper arrived a short dress on baseball for a year. 11. Complete sincerity resulted annoyed reactions from hypocrites for a year. 12. The muddy water surged difficult hikes in construction several times. 13. The rabid dog trembled the distance to the tall mountain westward. 14. The unexpected event occurred the sleighride on legal justice three times.

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15. The uniformed policemen blustered the crowd of angry women toward the city. 16. The tropical heat departed the butter of packed snow on the window-sill.

STRICT SUBCATEGORIZATION: TWO VIOLATIONS, LIST B.

1. The impending winter of food drove the deer herd on the plateau. 2. The courageous islanders of Englishmen endured repeated air raids into the street. 3. The talkative people of students elected a sympathetic advisor for days. 4. The subjective probability of a jackpot rose financial losses on the table. 5. The birds of broad-winged geese followed the prong-horned antelope at the pond. 6. The idea of total freedom lingered tyrannical suppression two times. 7. The typewriter of the brass lamp frightened the timid giraffe toward the tree. 8. The sight of the green mobile persisted the long-tailed monkeys twice. 9. The spherical satellite soared a brief message to Johnson on the field. 10. The daily newspaper arrived a short column on baseball for five minutes. 11. Complete sincerity resulted annoyed reactions from hypocrites for a year. 12. The muddy water surged difficult problems in construction on the window-sill. 13. The rabid dog climbed the fence to the tall mountain on the grate. 14. The unexpected event occurred the lecture on legal justice for four years.

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15. The uniformed policemen dispersed the housewives of angry women for five minutes. 16. The tropical heat melted the butter of packed snow several times.

STRICT SUBCATEGORIZATION: TWO VIOLATIONS, LIST C.

1. The impending winter of food drove the deer herd on the plateau. 2. The courageous islanders of Englishmen endured repeated air raids into the street. 3. The talkative people of students rioted a sympathetic advisor once a year. 4. The subjective person of a jackpot determined financial losses into a casino. 5. The birds of broad-winged geese ambled the prong-horned antelope toward the water. 6. The Aztecs of total freedom survived tyrannical suppression into the country. 7. The typewriter of the brass lamp appeared the timid giraffe twice. 8. The desk of the green mobile surprised the long-tailed monkeys for an hour. 9. The spherical satellite soared a brief jacket to Johnson toward Washington. 10. The daily newspaper arrived a short dress on baseball for a year. 11. Complete sincerity resulted annoyed men from hypocrites at the meeting. 12. The muddy water surged difficult hikes in construction several times. 13. The rabid dog trembled the fence to the tall mountain toward the west. 14. The unexpected event interrupted the sleighride on legal justice toward the podium.

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15. The uniformed policemen dispersed the housewives of angry women for five minutes. 16. The tropical heat melted the butter of packed snow several times. STRICT SUBCATEGORIZATION: THREE VIOLATION LIST.

1. The impending winter of food lasted the deer herd three times. 2. The courageous islanders of Englishmen perished repeated air raids twice. 3. The talkative people of students rioted a sympathetic advisor toward the campus. 4. The subjective person of a jackpot rose financial losses on the table. 5. The birds of broad-winged geese ambled the prong-horned antelope at the intersection. 6. The Aztecs of total freedom lingered tyrannical suppression two times. 7. The typewriter of the brass lamp appeared the timid giraffe into the water. 8. The desk of the green mobile persisted the long-tailed monkeys twice. 9. The spherical satellite soared a brief jacket to Johnson on the field. 10. The daily newspaper arrived a short dress on baseball for five minutes. 11. Complete sincerity resulted annoyed men from hypocrites for a year. 12. The muddy water surged difficult hikes in construction on the window-sill. 13. The rabid dog trembled the fence to the tall mountain westward. 14. The unexpected event occurred the sleighride on legal justice for four years. 15. The uniformed policemen blustered the housewives of angry women toward the city. 16. The tropical heat departed the butter of packed snow for two hours.

APPENDIX B: SCHEMATIC INFORMATION ABOUT SENTENCE MATERIAL

I. NOUN MARKERS VIOLATED IN SR SENTENCES

Sentence

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Subject noun marker violated by adjective: A-N(S)

Subject or object noun marker violated by verb: K(S) or V(0)

Object noun marker violated by adjective: A-N(0)

+abstract +human +human +abstract +animate +abstract —animate •—abstract —animate —abstract +abstract —abstract —human +event 4- human —abstract

S: O: O: 0: O: S: S: S: S: O: S: 0: 0: S: 0: S:

+collective —abstract +human +abstract +animate +abstract —human +animate —animate —abstract +event +abstract —animate +abstract +human —abstract

—animate —animate —collective —animate —liquid —animate* —animate —animate —animate* —animate —animate* +abstract —event —animate* —event —-animate

•the verb carried the SR +human on its subject

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II.

DISTRIBUTION OF SR VIOLATIONS IN 1 VIOLATION LISTS BY SENTENCES

Violation

List A

List B

List C

A-N(S) A-N(O) V

1,2,7,8,11,12,13,14 4,6,10,16 3,5,9,15

3,5,9,15 1,2,7,8,11,12,13,14 4,6,10,16

4,6,10,16 3,5,9,15 1,2,7,8,11,12,13,14

III.

DISTRIBUTION OF SR VIOLATIONS IN 2 VIOLATION LISTS BY SENTENCES

Violations

List A

List B

List C

A-N(S)&(0) A-N(S)&V V & A-N(0)

1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15 4,8,12,16 2,6,10,14

2,6,10,14 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15 4,8,12,16

4,8,12,16 2,6,10,14 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15

IV. DISTRIBUTION OF SSC VIOLATIONS IN 1 VIOLATION LISTS BY SENTENCES Violations

List A

List B

List C

Vi N PP

1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15 2,6,8,14 4,10,12,16

8,10,12,14 4,7,13,16 1,2,3,5,6,9,11,15

2,6,10,11 1,3,4,5,8,13,15,16 7,9,12,14

V. DISTRIBUTION OF SSC VIOLATIONS IN 2 VIOLATION LISTS BY SENTENCES Violations

List A

List B

Vi&PP N & Vi N & PP

1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16

4,6,8,9,10,11,12,14 1,2,3,5,7,13,15,16

List C

3,5,7,9,10,11,12,13 1,2,4,6,8,14,15,16

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VI. PP VIOLATIONS: TYPE OF PP FOR WHICH VERB IS NEGATIVELY MARKED Sentence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Vt (normal)

Vi (violation)

place direction duration direction place direction direction

frequency frequency direction place place frequency direction frequency place duration duration place direction duration direction duration

place direction direction direction direction duration frequency

APPENDIX C: WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAIN EXPERIMENT

I.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR CORRECTION GROUP (I)

1. Rate how deviant the sentence is from normal English. Circle one of the numbers from 0 (normal) to 6 (extremely deviant). 2. Think of the smallest possible change that can be made in the sentence you see to produce a sentence others would rate as normal. Write your sentence down. Check to see that the answer is 'yes' to the following questions: i. Is your sentence about the same length as the sentence at the top of the page? ii. Is your handwriting legible? iii. Would other people judge your sentence to be normal? iv. Have you changed the original sentence as little as possible to produce your normal sentence? 3. Rate how easy it was for you to produce your own sentence. Circle one of the numbers from —3 (very hard) to + 3 (very easy).

II.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION GROUP (II)

1. Rate how deviant the sentence is from normal English. Circle one of the numbers from 0 (normal) to 6 (extremely deviant). 2. Assume that whoever produced the sentence had something quite definite in mind. Think of a sentence in your own words that means the same thing as the sentence you see, but is easier for others to understand. Write your sentence down. Check to see that the answer is 'yes' to the following questions:

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i. Is your sentence about the same length as the sentence at the top of the page? ii. Is your handwriting legible? iii. Would other people understand your sentence more easily than the one at the top of the page? iv. Does your sentence mean what you think the speaker of the original sentence had in mind? 3. Rate how easy it was for you to produce your own sentence. Circle one of the numbers from —3 (very hard) to + 3 (very easy).

APPENDIX D: INSTRUCTIONS AND SAMPLE SENTENCES GIVEN TO RATERS

You are going to see 16 booklets containing sentences; you are asked to indicate, for each sentence, whether it is a normal English sentence or not. The sentences were written by people who were asked to correct or to paraphrase (interpret) an original set of sentences which were intended to deviate from normal English sentences. The writer may not always have succeeded in her intention; this is one possibility that your judgments will check on. The sentences given by subjects may or may not be normal; subjects may not have fully 'corrected' the original sentence, may have thought it normal to begin with, or may have introduced oddities of their own. You will be providing the information as to whether subjects' sentences are or are not normal. Another question your ratings will answer is whether subjects show less ability to produce a normal sentence in the face of an increasingly deviant original sentence. The definition of 'normal English sentence' will simply be: a sentence that you and other native speakers of English would rate as normal. The definition is vague because we are relying on the fact (assumption) that every native speaker, including yourself, has an implicit set of rules about the language that lets him interpret and produce sentences that other people understand. You are being asked to use your linguistic intuition, rather than dimly remembered statements of your high-school English teacher. In making your judgments, you should ignore spelling; it should be correct except for uncaught typographical errors. You should spend enough time on each sentence to register what it means, but little more - simply note 'N' for normal or 'D' for deviant (defective, non-normal) in front of the sentence. If you really have trouble

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deciding about a sentence, rate it D* (this will be coded as 'deviant - uncertain'). You will probably want to break the task up into several sessions. You may rate the sentences in any order you wish. A sample set of sentences for you to rate follows - after you've rated them, we'll talk over any problems that arise. Thank you. Sample

Sentences:

1. The girl in the red dress drank the orange carrot in a few minutes. 2. The brilliant mathematician solved the difficult problem in a few minutes at the blackboard. 3. The incomplete director interrupted the hectic rehearsal twice during the afternoon. 4. The wooden dog caught the giddy stick at the edge of the water. 5. The brilliant mathematician behaved the difficult problem in a few minutes at the blackboard. 6. The harassed director remained the hectic rehearsal twice out of the room. 7. The young journalist wrote a short column about baseball three times a week. 8. The idea of total freedom lingered through tyrannical suppression two times. 9. The objective probability of a jackpot rose financial losses on the table. 10. The daily newspaper ran a column on baseball filled with latent amusement for a year. 11. The talkative students elected a sympathetic advisor for days. 12. The flock of cement-mixers poured the cement to the shape of an antelope.

INDEX OF NAMES

Carrier, S., 22 Chafe, W., 38-39 Chomsky, N„ 7, llfn., 14, 15, 20, 2629, 31-32, 33, 35, 39, 67, 68 Clifton, C„ llfn., 12fn. Coleman, E., 12fn., 19-20 Cummings, E., 31 Danks, J., 24fn., 25fn., 42fn. Davidson, R., 20, 34fn., 52 Downey, R., 21-22, 49, 52-53 Epstein, W., 17fn. Fillenbaum, S., 18 Fodor, J., 13fn„ 29-30,31fn., 32fn., 33 Garret, M., 13fn. Glucksberg, S., 24fn., 25fn., 42fn. Gough, P., 12fn. Grossman, P., 7 Hakes, D., 21-22, 49, 52-53 Hill, A., 12fn„ 15 Isard, S., 12fn„ 15-16, 17, 20 James, S., 7 Jenkins, J., llfn. Katz., J., 29-30, 31fn„ 32-34, 35, 6768 Kurcz, I., llfn.

Lyons, J., 13fn. Maclay, H., 12fn„ 14-15, 20 Marks, L„ 12fn., 16-18, 56fn. McKean, K„ 12fn. McMahon, E., 12fn. Mehler, J., 12fn. Miller, G„ 12, 15-18, 20 Miller, J., 7 Odom, P., 12fn. Perchonock, E., 12fn. Postal, P., 29 Sachs, J., 22 Savin, H., 12fn. Scholes, R., 7 Sebeok, T., 33fn., 39fn. Selfridge, J., 12 Selkirk, E„ 18fn„ 22-24 Simpson, W., 20, 34fn. Sleator, M., 12fn„ 14-15, 20 Slobin, D., 12fn., 22fn. Strawson, P., 13 Thomas, D., 31 Thorne, J., 13fn. Wales, R., 13fn. Wason, P., 12fn„ 14fn. Weinreich, U., 33-35,38,66,67-68,70