Effectiveness of word order and grammatical marker as syntactic indicators of semantic relations

The effectiveness of word order and grammatical markers as syntactic indicators of semantic relations was explored using an artificial linguistic system. The results showed: (1) semantic interpretation of novel sentences was possible not only for Ss given fixed word order sentences with or without the markers, but also for Ss given the markers in random word order sentences; (2) Ss given neither indicator showed chance performance; (3) word order tended to be more efficient than grammatical markers as clues to semantic relations. The results suggest that the critical condition for language acquisition is the constant covariation of linguistic structure with semantic contexts. A process approach is discussed in accounting for the findings.Half of the data of the present experiment (FP and FA) were collected by Miss Norie Wake for her BA thesis, Okayama University (1978). The other half (RP and RA) were collected by the three juniors for their advanced course of experimental psychology, Okayama University (1979).