The basic accomplishment of sentence processing research in the
1960s and 70s was to establish that perceivers assign structural
representa- tions to sentences (Fodor et al., 1974) and they do so
systematically using the formation rules of the grammar (Forster,
1979). This may sound like a singularly unimpressive accomplishment
to a contem- porary linguist - mere proof of the obvious. But one
must recall the extremely impoverished view of language and
language processing prevalent in the U.S. in the 1950s. Processing
mechanisms were thought to consist of slightly elaborated
stimulus-response associations, and sentences were viewed as mere
strings of concatenated words. On this view, understanding language
comprehension was naturally equated with knowing how words and
associations between them were learned. Consequently, language pro-
cessing was investigated by performing a seemingly endless series
of tedious paired associate learning studies. The shift in the
1960s to a view of sentences emphasizing hierarchically organized
structures con- taining grammatical depencies between widely
separated items was thus dramatic.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!