Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:43:18.004Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sentence structure and formality1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Harry Levin  and
Peter Garrett
Harry Levin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Cornell University
Peter Garrett
Affiliation:
University College of North Wales
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The evidence is practically unequivocal that left-branching (LB) sentences are more difficult to process than right-branching (RB) sentences. In this study, the hypothesis was tested that LB sentences are judged to be more formal than RB ones and that center-branching (CB) sentences would behave like LB ones. Three groups of subjects, university students in England, Wales, and the United States, ordered three versions of 18 sentences in terms of their formality. LB and CB sentences were considered more formal than RB ones by all three groups of students. LB and CB types did not differ from each other. In a second study, American students choose from the group of three sentences the one they would say to a formal listener (professer/employer) or to an informal listener (brother/sister or close friend). RB sentences were attributed to informal listeners and LB and CB sentences, to formal listeners. (Grammar, formality, sociolinguistics)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 511 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bell, A. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13:145–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bever, T. G., & Townsend, D. J. (1979). Perceptual mechanisms and formal properties of main and subordinate clauses. In Cooper, W. E. & Walker, E. C. T. (eds.), Sentence processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 159–226.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N., & Miller, G. (1963). Introduction to the formal analysis of natural languages. In Luce, R. D., Bush, R. R., & Galanter, E. (eds.), Handbook of mathematicalpsychology (Vol. 2). New York: Wiley. 269–321.Google Scholar
Cooper, W. E., & Paccia-Cooper, J. (1980). Syntax and speech, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forster, K. I. (1966). Left-to-right processes in the construction of sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavlor 5:285–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forster, K. I. (1968). Sentence completion of left- and right-branching languages. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 7:296–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, L., & Fodor, J. D. (1978). The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model. Cognition 6:291–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, L., & Rayner, K. (1987). Parameterizing the language processing System: Left- vs. right branching within and across languages. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Kemper, S. (1986). Syntatic complexity and capacity limitations in old age. Paper delivered to Psychonomic Society, New Orleans, 11 15.Google Scholar
Kimball, J. (1973). Seven principles of surface structure parsing in natural language. Cognition 2(1):15–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1972a). Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in Society 1:97–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1972b). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Levin, H. (1979). The eye-voice span. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levin, H., Grossman, J., Kaplan, E., & Yang, R. (1972). Constraints on the eye-voice span in right and left embedded sentences. Language and Speech 15:30–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levin, H., Long, S., & Shaffer, C. A. (1981). The formality of the Latinate lexicon in English. Language and Speech 42:161–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, H., & Novak, M. (in press). Origins and frequencies of words as determinants of formality in language. Discourse Processes.Google Scholar
Yngue, V. H. A. (1960). A model and an hypothesis for language structure. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104:444–66.Google Scholar