Given-New Ordering Effects on the Production of Scrambled Sentences in Japanese

Across many languages, speakers tend to produce sentences so that given (previously referred to) arguments are mentioned before new arguments; this is termed given-new ordering. We explored the nature of such given-new effects in Japanese using a procedure following Bock and Irwin (1980). Speakers encoded and then recalled canonical (e.g., okusan-ga otetsudaisan-ni purezento-o okutta, the housewife gave the housekeeper a present) or scrambled (okusan-ga purezento-o otetsudaisan-ni okutta) dative targets when prompted by a statement-question sequence. The prompting statement established one nonsubject argument of the dative target as given, leaving the other nonsubject argument as new. Previous mention was either with lexically identical content (e.g., otetsudaisan or purezento) or with lexically distinct but nearly synonymous content (meidosan, housemaid or okurimono, gift). Results showed that speakers produced canonical or scrambled word orders so that given arguments were mentioned before new, but especially when the previous mention of the given argument occurred with lexically identical content (replicating Bock and Irwin's English effect). These results show that the production of Japanese scrambled and canonical word orders is sensitive to given versus new status (as in English), implying that given-new ordering arises at the stage of sentence production where scrambling effects are realized.     

Yes,Virginia, Lemons are Yellow

This paper discusses a number of themes and arguments in The Quest for Reality: Stroud's distinction between philosophical and ordinary questions about reality; the similarity he finds between the view that coloris unreal and the view that it is subjective; his argument against thesecondary quality theory; his argument against the error theory; and the disappointing conclusion of the book.     

Six-year-old children's understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs

The adjoining of clauses with temporal links is the basis for many sentences that convey sequence of events. The present study attempts to delineate 6-year-old children's (N=30) understanding of the meaning sequences imparted by sentences adjoined with after, before, and until. Their performance of the meaning sequence for each of 24 carefully constructed sentences is compared to an adult model. Analysis of the results (using a Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank Test) indicated that: (1)Ss understood sentences adjoined with after according to an adult model more frequently than before adjoined sentences (P<0.01); (b) Until adjoined sentences with a negative marker in the main clause were understood according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences with no such negative element, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01; (3)Ss understood before adjoined sentences according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01. In general, the results indicated that 6-year-olds have not yet completed development of an adult grammar with respect to adjoining clauses with temporal links, after, before, and until.     

Oral production of linguistically complex sentences with meaning relationships of time

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the abilities of children to use the adjoining mechanism in combining two constituent sentences with the temporal adjoiners: after, before, until, when, and while. To elicit responses, a sentence repetition task was devised that included these five temporal adjoiners in four different syntactic environments: transitive sentences with the adjoiner and the subordinate clause following the main clause, transitive sentences with the adjoiner and the subordinate clause preceding the main clause, intransitive sentences with the adjoiner and the subordinate clause following the main clause, and intransitive sentences with the adjoiner and the subordinate clause preceding the main clause. The 30 were between the ages of 4O and 66 years. They were average children who were free from any known emotional disturbance, who were acquiring Standard American English as a native language, who had normal speech and hearing, and whose parents had neither very high nor very low socioeconomic status. To the extent that the children in this study were representative of normal-speaking children of their ages, certain general conclusions were drawn. Children begin to use the temporal adjoining mechanism early, but they do not master it by the age of 66 years. The ability to use the adjoiners, nor is it equal for different syntactic structures nor for all degrees of semantic complexity. After, before, and when appear earlier than while and until. A rapid period of growth in learning to use the temporal adjoining mechanism occurs between the ages of 4 and 5 years. However, a plateau of learning appears to be reached between the ages of 5 and 6 years. In general, children first learn to use the temporal adjoining mechanism in intransitive sentences with the adjoining link in the middle or at the beginning of the utterance. Next, they learn to use it in transitive sentences with the adjoining link at the beginning of the utterance. Finally, they learn to use it in transitive sentences with the adjoining link in the middle of the utterance. In transitive sentences, children appear to learn the rule for placing the subordinate clause at the beginning of the utterance when temporally adjoining two constituent sentences before they learn the base structure rule. In intransitive sentences, they appear to learn the rule for placing the subordinate clause at the beginning of the utterance when temporally adjoining two constituent sentences at the same time that they learn the base structure rule. The underlying semantic relationships that are expressed by specific temporal adjoiners are important determinants of children's abilities to use these adjoiners. In linguistic evaluations, one should consider the syntactic environment in which the temporal adjoiner occurs and assume that after, before, and when are developmentally earlier than while and until.     

In and behind a Lenneberg paradigm

Lenneberg suggested that a chimpanzee's linguistic ability could be tested by presenting sentences containing two prepositional phrases joined by a conjunction. This would involve joining two semantic propositions, and thus represents a more complex test of chimpanzee syntactic competence than previously attempted. Jane, a five year-old language trained chimpanzee, was tested on her ability to both produce and comprehend sentences involving a preposition (in or behind) and a conjunction (and). The results from production and comprehension were substantially the same. Jane showed the ability to appropriately deploy and, behind and in, but displayed very little flexibility in their use. It is suggested that a chimpanzee may be able to learn some rules of syntax but is not able to be creative with that syntax.     

The elimination of de re formulas

It is shown that de re formulas are eliminable in the modal logic S5 extended with the axiom scheme x x.     

Covering Gender on Memory's Front Page: Men's Prominence and Women's Prospects

The gender composition of highly available, naturally acquired memories for famous people was investigated in four field studies and three experiments with predominantly Caucasian children and adults. When memory was probed with only a linguistically gender-neutral retrieval cue (famous people), both male and female participants recalled significantly more famous men than famous women. Adding a gender-inclusive retrieval cue (men or women) significantly attenuated this androcentric recall effect for men and completely eliminated it for women. Women also recalled famous women just as rapidly as they recalled famous men in an experiment that utilized gender-specific cues (famous men famous women). Regardless of how memory was probed, large gender of participant effects were consistently observed. Gendercentric processing of androcentric cultural data is proposed as an explanation for the pattern of results observed here, and limitations and implications of this research are noted.     

Context and strategy in acquiring temporal connectives

There has been considerable debate over the role of comprehension strategies in the acquisition of temporal connectives. This study examined the role of caluse logic and interpretational strategies in the acquisition of temporal words; age-related changes were also considered. Thirty-two children between 3 and 5 years of age served as subjects. Sentences with a variety of temporal words were used to tap children's comprehension of before, after, when, while, just before that, and and after that. Clause logic was found to significantly improve the understanding of these sentences. However, the order of mention and main clause first strategies were used infrequently. Apparently, when children respond to sentences that describe information in a way that is consistent with that they normally hear, these strategies are seldom applied.I wish to express my thanks to Janice Bogen, who assisted in data collection, and to Erika Hoff-Ginsberg, who assisted in some of the data analysis.     

PROXY FUNCTIONS,TRUTH AND REFERENCE

Quines ontological relativity is related to Tarskis theory of truth in two ways: Quine repudiates term-by-term-correspondence, as does Tarskis rule of truth; and Quines proxy argument in support of relativity finds exact formulation in Tarskis truth definition.Unfortunately, relativity is threatened by the fact that the proxy argument doesnt comply with the rule of truth (Tarskis celebrated condition (T)). Despite Quines express allegiance to (T), use of proxy schemes does not generate all of the true sentences condition (T) requires.A possible adjustment is to drop (T), retain the satisfaction definition and proxy argument, and appeal to the theory of observation and indeterminacy of reference as grounds of relativity. But as we shall see Quines theories of assent to observation sentences and of reference-learning dont square easily with his naturalism. The first attributes intentional attitudes to observers; and the second assumes a holistic context principle and a concept of individuation which do not withstand scrutiny as empirical notions. Both appear to violate Quines behavorist canon.A saving alternative is a theory of term-reference that appears in Roots of Reference and affords a return to behaviorism, and reinstatement of the proxy argument and relativity in a way compatible with Tarskis (T).     

Some aspects of eloquence in Descartes's works

In Descartes's philosophy, communicating scientific and philosophical truth does not represent a problem that can be traced back to humanistic rhetoric, meant as the art of persuasion. Descartes states his belief in the eloquence of reason: a clear, precise, and adequately expressed thought cannot fail to convince the listener. This is the measure of the distance between the level of truth and the level of opinion. However, the moment of confrontation with the public is also the very moment when the truth of the new knowledge enters into conflict with other, different conceptions. Education and history influence communication with the result that the distinction between intellectual conviction and persuasion becomes less straightforward. Rational eloquence, as Descartes is well aware, must be articulated in such a way as to avoid any possible language equivocation and to adopt exposition strategies ensuring effective access to readers. The aim of this paper is to illustrate some aspects of this tension as expressed by the writer Descartes with reference to a number of texts (from the Regulae to the Meditationes) that were essential for the elaboration and dissemination of his philosophy.     

Feminism versus minority group identity: Not for black woman only

An analytical review of the literature revealed four basic hypotheses that have been adopted by researchers investigating Black women and their relationships. The hypotheses have been identified by the author as follows: The weakening hypothesis, the double whammy hypothesis, the Black matriarchy hypothesis, and the Black racism hypothesis. In addition, a discussion of the implication that the hypotheses have for Black and White researchers was given. Finally, suggestions for new approaches and directions that future research should take were included.     

A Chemically Induced “Shadow”?

Stevenson's classic yarn, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is explored as a vivid, insightful story of addiction. In spite of clinical temptations to chase deeper issues connected with the dark side, this article suggests that pastoral counselors and psychotherapists need to first ask whether a client's shadow may be chemically induced.     

Hemingway's Aging Heroes and the Concept of Phronesis

This article explores the concept of phronesis (practical wisdom) in four aging protagonists in Ernest Hemingway's works ranging from the short story A Clean Well-Lighted Place to the novella The Old Man and the Sea. Phronesis represents an understanding of the ways of the world, an acute sensitivity to a critical logic of human existence that can be attained only through extensive experience and suffering. The four aging protagonists are examples of Hemingway's definition of aging productively and profitably by purchasing an inner peace that consists of an intuitive system of continuous adjustment to the exigencies of daily living.     

Introduction to the Special Edition: The Implications of Multicultural Diversity and Ethnopolitical Conflict for Working with Groups

This introduction to a special edition of the journal Group on The Implications of Multicultural Diversity and Ethnopolitical Conflict for Working with Groups explores the reasons that social and political forces and traumatic societal events have until recently been neglected in the theory and practice of group psychotherapy. Freud's abandonment of the infantile seduction theory and subsequent emphasis on intrapsychic fantasy and defense, the philosophy and science of the Enlightenment, and professional norms in a field dominated by individuals from privileged classes and cultures are cited as sources of the relative neglect of ethnopolitical conflict, minority issues, and multicultural diversity in the treatment process. The articles in this journal attempt to redress these shortcomings and constitute a movement towards including these factors in the common standard of training and treatment.     

Sex bias in visual images evoked by generics: A new zealand study

Male biases are known to exist in the usage, evaluation, and interpretation of masculine generics. This study explored, by means of a tachistoscope, sex-specific biases in visual images evoked by masculine (All men are created equal, At university a student can study whatever he wants) and feminine (The feminists protested outside the town hall, At university a student can study whatever she wants) generics. Photographs of male and female faces were presented in a deliberately ambiguous (subthreshold) viewing field while maintaining the masculine or feminine generic sentence on constant view. It was predicted and found in a sample of 48 university students that if generics invoked sex-specific images, the images would affect the direction in which the viewer would resolve the ambiguous faces, resulting in more reported male faces in the masculine than in the feminine generic condition.Preparation of this article was supported by a New Zealand Social Sciences Research Fund Committee grant (8632/21/24/8604) to S. H. Ng.     

Developmental study of the comprehension and production of the pronoun “it”

Forty-two English-speaking children aged 3,3 to 7,0 were asked to act out instructions of the type There is clay on the table, give it to me, where the pronoun it occurs in object position and refers to a collective noun, or to a count noun, or to a noun (chocolate) which can be either. They were also asked to describe actions performed by the experimenter and to repeat the experimenter's instructions. A hierarchical pattern of behavior emerged and unexpected errors were noted. The results do not appear to be interpretable from the purely linguistic point of view; it is argued that analogous observations have been made in problem-solving tasks and that therefore cognitive development in general must play an important part.     

“Minimax length links” of a dissimilarity matrix and minimum spanning trees

A theorem is proved stating that the set of all minimax links, defined as links minimizing, over paths, the maximum length of links in any path connecting a pair of objects comprising nodes in an undirected weighted graph, comprise the union of all minimum spanning trees of that graph. This theorem is related to methods of fitting network models to dissimilarity data, particularly a method called Pathfinder due to Schvaneveldt and his colleagues, as well as to single linkage clustering, and results concerning the relationship between minimum spanning trees and single linkage hierarchical trees.Acknowledgments: The author thanks Phipps Arabie, Lawrence J. Hubert, and K. Christoph Klauer for a number of helpful suggestions and comments on various aspects of this paper.     

Confusion in philosophy: A comment on Williams (1992)

Patricia Williams made a number of claims concerning the methods and practise of cladistic analysis and classification. Her argument rests upon the distinction of two kinds of hierarchy: a divisional hierarchy depicting evolutionary descent and the Linnean hierarchy describing taxonomic groups in a classification. Williams goes on to outline five problems with cladistics that lead her to the conclusion that systematists should eliminate cladism as a school of biological taxonomy and to replace it either with something that is philosophically coherent or to replace it with pure methodology, untainted by theory (Williams 1992, 151). Williams makes a number of points which she feels collectively add up to insurmountable problems for cladistics. We examine Williams' views concerning the two hierarchies and consider what cladists currently understand about the status of ancestors. We will demonstrate that Williams has seriously misunderstood many modern commentators on this subject and all of her five persistent problems are derivable from this misunderstanding.

Nelson (1989, 67).

     

The effect of sex labels on adults' knowledge of infant development

The present study investigated the influence of sex label of an infant on adult men's and women's knowledge of infant development. Two hundred thirty nine adults were asked to indicate on a questionnaire the age at which they believed infants were first able to perform a variety of developmental skills. The 56 skills equally represented cognitive, language, motor, and personal-social behaviors. One third of the adults received a questionnaire about girls, one third about boys, and one third about babies (sex label not provided). Each of the three groups had equal numbers of men and women. Contrary to previous findings, results indicated that the sex label of the infant did not affect adults' ratings of behaviors. This finding is discussed with respect to current cognitive-social psychological conceptualizations of gender stereotypes.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Early Childhood Education Conference, Kent, Ohio, October 1984, and the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, California, August 1985.