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Contextual information and temporal terms*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Paul Gorrell ,
Stephen Crain  and
Janet Dean Fodor
Paul Gorrell*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
Stephen Crain
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Janet Dean Fodor
Affiliation:
City University of New York
*
Linguistics Program, Mill Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
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Abstract

We report an experiment designed to identify how contextual information can influence children's performance on an experimental task involving temporal terms. Grain (1982) reported improved performance on a comprehension task when subjects were provided with contextual information, and he suggested that the improvement was due to satisfaction of presuppositions. However, this contextual information might have served to simplify task demands by providing prior information concerning an important aspect of the task. The present study distinguishes these factors by incorporating contextual information into the subordinate clause of the test sentences in a comprehension experiment (to satisfy presupposions) or into the main clause (to provide comparable prior information without satisfying presuppositions). We conclude that contextual information results in a significant improvement only when such information can be used to satisfy presuppositions.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , October 1989 , pp. 623 - 632
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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Footnotes

*

This work was supported, in part, by NSF Grant BNS 84–18537. We would like to thank Cecile McKee for help with the design and implementation of the experiments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1986 Boston University Conference on Language Development.

References

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