Abstract/Details

A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF NOUN-VERB RELATIONSHIPS IN EXPERIENTIAL-VERB ENGLISH SENTENCES

TRUESDALE, EDWARD VANCE, JR.   University of South Carolina ProQuest Dissertations Publishing,  1981. 8129482.

Abstract (summary)

Verbs referring to mental experience in English differ in how they assign the case role "experiencer" to sentence nouns. Verbs like enjoy are "Left-Hand Experiencers" (LHEs) in that they assign experiencer to the left-hand noun in a simple active sentence. Verbs like delight are "Right-Hand Experiencers" (RHEs) in that they assign experiencer to the right-hand noun.

LHE and RHE verbs raise questions about semantic and syntactic organization in sentences. Past research has investigated whether subjects or objects of sentences are more important conceptually. Some of this research has suggested that sentences are organized conceptually in ways consistent with Chomskyan syntactic theory. However, other studies have suggested that sentences are organized conceptually in ways that are more consistent with semantic (case) theories of language.

This study reports on research in which sentences having LHE and RHE verbs were used to investigate the relative role of syntactic and semantic structure in experiential-verb English sentences. A series of experiments looked at patterns of recall and interpretation in such sentences. Three sentence-memory experiments found no effect of syntactic or semantic structure on memory for nouns and verbs. However, in experiments in which readers were asked to judge which nouns were topics of sentences, the patterns of response were significantly different for LHE and RHE verbs. The overall results suggest that the organization of the experiential-verb sentence involves complex interrelations between features of syntactic structure, semantic structure, and discourse (topic-comment) structure.

Indexing (details)


Subject
Linguistics
Classification
0290: Linguistics
Identifier / keyword
Language, literature and linguistics
Title
A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF NOUN-VERB RELATIONSHIPS IN EXPERIENTIAL-VERB ENGLISH SENTENCES
Author
TRUESDALE, EDWARD VANCE, JR.
Number of pages
144
Degree date
1981
School code
0202
Source
DAI-A 42/07, Dissertation Abstracts International
Place of publication
Ann Arbor
Country of publication
United States
ISBN
979-8-204-09345-4
University/institution
University of South Carolina
University location
United States -- South Carolina
Degree
Ph.D.
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
8129482
ProQuest document ID
303157981
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/docview/303157981