Journal
P \ ~ r h n l i t nn, i ~ i cR f i c i i r t h. Vul. 9. ,Vo. I . /YiW
I
Comprehension and Memory of the Literal
and Figurative Meaning of Proverbs
J. Kathryn Bock' and William F. Brewer?
-
Proverbs were used t o examine reci)gt~itionm e m o n f o r four wpes of sentence information
U?guraticr meaning, literal meaning, lexical inforrnutinn, syntactic information) with n\.u
li'vels of comprehension. Forced-choice recognition tasks showed that subjects were
s u ~ ~ c i ' s . ~i nj i ~rernetnhering
I
all fi111r t\'pes of infi)rrnation. Recognition scores for the
fifiircuin' t u c t i t ~ i no~j ~unfamiliar pr(1verh.s presented in isolation were above chance and
were also .xi,ynij'icantl~ improved when procedures were employed which encouraged
comprehension oJ this level of meaning. The results are most consistent with theories of
comprehension which provide for dijfkrent type's of processing for figurative and literal
l(~ni;ntit,'e.
- INTRODUCTION
- Proverbs are a particularly interesting class of materials for psycholin-
.
guistic research, since most proverbs have both a literal and a figurative
level of meaning. At the literal level, a proverb such as "Run after two
hares and you will catch neither" gives advice about catching rabbits,
whereas at the figurative level it suggests that if you try to do too many
things you may accomplish none of them. The ability to comprehend both
levels of meaning is productive. For example, someone who has never
heard thi" proverb "One who scalds his tongue upon hot soup blows upon
~ e ~ a r t m e of
n i Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing. Michigan 48824.
- ~ e ~ a r t m e noft Psychology, Psychology Building, University of Illinois, Champaign,
Illinois 6 1820.
U<Èyu-6%)5/XO/~)l(XI-0059'50
(Xl.'l)
(
1980 Plenum Publishing Corporation
60
Bock and Brewer
cold soup" can use the linguistic input as a guide to construct an
interpretation at the literal level, where the proverb deals with a person
who burns his tongue on hot soup. The hearer can also construct an
interpretation at the figurative level, where the proverb means roughly the
same thing as the proverb "He goes cautiously alongside the brook, who
has slipped into the sea."
Figurative language can be produced in several forms, of which
metaphor is perhaps the most common. Metaphors, according to
Richards (1965), are composed of two principal terms, the topic and
vehicle, and the relationship between them, the ground. The topic is
usually the subject of the metaphorical sentence, while the vehicle
is the term being used metaphorically. The ground is created by the points
o r relations of similarity between the two. For example, in "Billboards
are warts on the landscape" (from Verbrugge and McCarrell, 1977), "billboards" is the topic, "warts" is the vehicle and unsightly protrusions on
a surface" is the ground. Perrine (1971) has proposed a classification
scheme in which proverbs are treated as a type of metaphor in which only
the vehicle-the metaphorical term-is explicitly stated. Proverbs may
then be viewed as a type of metaphor which requires greater contextual
support or more processing than the type of metaphor in which both the
topic and vehicle are explicitly stated.
The ability to understand proverbs (Buhler, 1908; Honeck, 1973;
Honeck e l at., 1975), metaphor (Harris, 1976; Ortony et ul., l978b;
Verbrugge and McCarrell, 1977), and the figurative level of language in
general is of considerable theoretical interest since, until recently, most
theories of meaning in psychology and linguistics dealt with only the
literal level (e.g., Anderson and Bower, 1973; Katz and Fodor, 1963).
Although this deficiency has been remedied in several models, none of the
mechanisms suggested for the comprehension of figurative language by
current theories is fully satisfactory.
The approaches to figurative language in current theories fall into two
general categories. The first type of approach emphasizes the continuity
between the comprehension of metaphorical language and literal language
(cf. Collins and Quillian, 1972; Verbrugge. 1977). Both metaphorical and
literal statements are interpreted relative to their contexts of occurrence.
without distinctly different types of inferences or stages of processing. A
similar view is implicit in Bobrow and Norman's (1975) schema theory.
A potential problem for this approach is the fact that in many cases
there is clear intuitive difference between figurative and literal language
(Buhler, 195 1 ; Kintsch, 1974). Theories which postulate no differences
Comprehension and .Memory of Proverbs
61
* ,
I
between figu ative and literal language processing cannot account for this
intuition o r even for the fact that a c o n v e n t i d distinction between
literal and figurative language exists.
Contrasting with theories which do not incorporate different
mechanisms for the interpretation of figurative and literal language are
those which do. These theories require extraordinary measures for
metaphor comprehension, generally proceeding from recognition of
semantic anomaly at the literal level (Kintsch, 1972; Matthews. 1971:
Weinreich, 1966). Although these theories have the advantage of being
able to account for the intuitive difference between literal and figurative
language. they have a different problem. Since proverbs and many
metaphors are not primii fucie anomalous at the literal level, i t is not
obvious how such models. under normal circumstances, could describe
the derivation of the figurative interpretation without conceding that the
process is in some way dependent on extrasentential context (Kintsch.
1974; Ortony et at.. 1 9 7 8 ~ ) .
Because of the problems with both of these approaches, neither is
readily adaptable to the problem of understanding the figurative meaning
of an unfamiliar proverb (e.g., "A cracked pot never falls off the hook")
presented in isolation. The continuity models do not recognize a distinction between literal and figurative language. so an instruction that a
sentence, out of context, is to be "literally" o r "figuratively" interpreted
should be meaningless. Models which recognize the distinction require
semantic anomaly to trigger figurative-level processing, and proverbs are
rarely anomalous. That people do. however, derive the figurative meaning of proverbs presented in isolation is suggested in an early study by
Harrower (1933). Harrower showed that proverbs were better recalled
when presented in conjunction with other proverbs having the same
figurative meaning than when presented with unrelated proverbs. More
recently, Honeck el al. (1978) have shown that even 7-year-old children
were able to select from a pair of pictures the one which was congruent
with the figurative interpretation of a proverb.
One purpose of the present study was to directly investigate the
ability to understand and remember both the fieurative and literal
meaning of unfamiliar proverbs presented in isolation. Subjects who knew
they would be tested for recognition of the figurative meaning of proverbs
were required to indicate which of two different proverbs had the same
figurative meaning as a previously presented proverb. It was therefore
necessary for the subjects to recognize the same figurative meaning in a
completely different literal form. Subjects who were tested for literal
1I
I
I
I
!
,
1
1
Bock and Brewer
62
meaning had to choose between a literally synonymous but syntactically
and lexically different form of the previously presented proverb and a
proverb with the same figurative meaning as the previously presented
proverb. These subjects thus had to differentiate literal and figurative
interpretations of the same proverb. Because the continuity models do
not provide special processes for figurative meaning comprehension. or
suggest strategic diagnostics for evaluating a potentially correlated
dimension like inferential depth, these models appear to predict that
recognition of the figurative or literal meaning of proverbs presented
under these conditions should be at a chance level. Models which provide
special processes for figurative-level comprehension require the assumption that these processes can be invoked strategically, without a literal
anomaly cue, but with this assumption these models predict better-thanchance recognition.
A second concern of this experiment was the possibility of improving
.
figurative meaning memory by providing an orienting task appropriate to
the processing of this level of meaning (Bransford et a / . , 1979; Morris et
a/..
Experiments by Honeck and his colleagues (Honeck, 1973;
- - - -1977).
,
,
Hnneck
------ - - et al.. 1975) indicate that prnverb recall can be increased by
providing subjects with a paraphrase of the figurative meaning of the
proverb, suggesting that better figurative meaning comprehension leads
tn
-- better memory for material which permits this level of interpretation. If
this improvement is specific to the figurative level of interpretation,
emphasizing comprehension of figurative meaning should increase
figurative meaning recognition, but not recognition for literal meaning or
surface structure information. This finding would provide further support
for the view that figurative meaning is processed differently than literal
meaning.
In addition to recognition memory for figurative and literal mean.. .
ing, the present experiment also examined recognition of stylisticsyntactic information, and lexical information. If subjects remember
information from a variety of linguistic "levels" after hearing sentences
(Anderson, 1974) it should be possible to demonstrate better-than-chance
recognition for each of these types of information. Proverbs provide a
unique opportunity to examine this question.
-
-
-
METHOD
Subjects
T h e subjects were 80 undergraduate students at the University of
Illinois who participated in partial fulfillment of the course requirement in
introductory psychology.
Comprehension and Memory of Proverbs
Materials
63
1
The procedures used to develop the materials produced proverb sets
containing six members: ( 1 ) an original proverb, (2) a version of the
original proverb that had undergone an optional surface transformation
(optional transform item). (3) a version of the original proverb in which
the content words were replaced by synonyms (synonym item), (4) a
version of the original proverb which had undergone both optional
transformation and synonym substitution (optional transform-synonym
item); ( 5 ) a proverb with the same figurative meaning as the original
proverb but with a different literal meaning (figurative meaning item), (6)
a randomly selected proverb with a different literal and figurative meaning
than the original proverb (random item). Twenty such sets were created
as follows.
Twenty pairs of proverbs, consisting of an original proverb and a
pairmate
of similar figurative meaning but different literal meaning(figurative meaning item) were chosen from standard works on proverbs
such as Davidoff (1946) and Pullar-Strecker (1954). The pairs were chosen
on the basis of two criteria: ( 1 ) the figurative meanings of the nroverb- rnairs
were rated "very similar" by each of four raters; and (2) both members of
the pairs were rated "unfamiliar" byeach of three raters. The 20 original
proverbs were altered by an optional surface transformation to produce
the 20 optional transform items. Insofar as possible, synonyms were
substituted for the content words of the original proverbs to create the 20
synonym items. In seven of the 20 original proverbs all of the content
words were replaced with synonym substitutions. In the remaining 13,
lexical substitution was partial because it was not possible to find
adequate synonyms. The 20 original proverbs contained 83 content words,
and synonym substitutions were found for 63 (76%). The 20 optional
transform-synonym items were developed by carrying out both optional
transformation and synonym substitution on the original
- .uroverbs. The 20
random items were selected from additional unfamiliar proverbs that did
not overlap with the original proverbs in either literal or figurative
meaning.
An example of one of the 20 sets is given Table I. An additional 18
provberbs were selected for use as filler items, and four additional sets of
six items were developed for use as a warmup list.
Since some of the original proverbs were expressed in archaic
vocabulary and syntax and some were not, the changes introduced by
synonym substitution and optional transformation were sometimes
toward more standard forms and sometimes away from more standard
forms. T o ensure that no bias was introduced into the experiment through
-
-
Bock and Brewer
Comprehension and Memory of Proverbs
05
Table I. E x a m p l e of a Proverb S e t
Original proverb: "Out of another's purse it is easy to be generous."
Optional transform item: "It is easy to be generous out of another's purse."
Synonym item: "From someone else's pocketbook it is easy to be charitable.'.
Optional transform-synonym item: "It is easy to be charitable from someone else's
pocketbook.''
Fieurative meaning item: "Broad thongs are cut from other people's leather."
Random item: "Even caviar tastes ill to him who is forced to eat it."
-
~W
these changes, half the subjects received acquisition lists containing the
20 original proverbs and half received acquisition lists containing the 20
optional transform-synonym versions of the original proverbs. Both
acquisition lists contained the same 18 filler proverbs. The items of each
acquisition list were assigned to two 19-item experimental lists, so that ten
of the items on each experimental list were original proverbs (or optional
transform-synonym proverbs) and nine were filler proverbs. The filler
proverbs on each experimental list were distributed so that two occurred
at the beginning of each experimental list and two at the end of each
experimental list. The order of the remaining items in the original proverb
acquisition list was random, and the same random order was used for the
optional transform-synonym acquisition list.
Recognition Memory Task
A two-alternative forced-choice recognition memory procedure was
used. There were four memory conditions differing with respect to the
test items used in the recognition task. For subjects who received the
original proverb acquisition list, memory for optional syntactic structure
was tested with the original proverb vs. its optional transform item. The
test for lexical memory contrasted the original proverb with its synonym
item; for literal meaning, the optional transform-synonym item was tested
against the figurative meaning item; and for figurative meaning, the
figurative meaning item was tested against the random item. For the
subjects receiving the optional transform-synonym acquisition list the
respective test item pairs used were optional transform-synonym vs.
synonym, optional transform-synonym vs. optional transform, original
proverb vs. figurative meaning item, and figurative meaning item vs.
random item. An example of the test items used in each of the four
different memory conditions for the original proverb list is given in Table
11.
Test tor
Optional s) ntiictic structure:
Original proverb: "Out o f a n o t h e r s purw it is e;isy to he generous ''
Optional transform item: "It i-i easy to be gencrtms out ot'anothcr'.-i purse."
L-e\ical information:
~
i t is e ~ i s yto he generotis.'.
Original proverb. "Our i > f a n o t h c r ' purse
Synonym item: "From .someone else's pockethook it is easy t o he ch:iiiiahle."
Literal meaning:
Optional transform-synonym item: "It is easy to be charitable from someone else's
pocketbook."
Figur-ative meaning item: "Broad thongs Lire cut from other people'\ leather..'
Figurative meaning:
Figurative meaning item: "Broad thong's are cut From other people'\ leather."
Random item: "Even caviar tastes ill to him who is forced to eat it."
Comprehension Task
The comprehension test developed for the original proverbs consisted of two-alternative forced-ciiui~eitems that required the conprehension of the figurative meaning of the original proverb for a correct
response. One of the alternatives described a situation relevant to the
figurative meaning of the proverb or paraphrased the figurative meaning
of the proverb, while the second alternative expressed a meaning that was
the opposite of or obliquely related to the figurative meaning of the
original proverb. Approximately half of the items were situational and
half were paraphrases. For example, the comprehension test item for the
proverb "He that lies down with dogs will get up with fleas" required a
choice between "Nixon's popularity dropped drastically during Watergate" and "St. Augustine led a wild life as a young man." The same
comprehension test items were used for the optional transform-synonym
acquisition list. Similar comprehension items were developed for the 18
filler proverbs and the four warmup items.
Design
There were four types of memory tests (optional syntactic structure,
lexical information, literal meaning, figurative meaning) and two levels of
comprehension (acquisition lists either with the comprehension test or
without the comprehension test). There were eight groups of ten subjects.
Bock and Brewer
Each group of ten subjects was assigned to one of the eight treatment
combinations.
Procedure
All subjects received a four-item practice list and two 19-item
experimental lists. The experimenter read the lists aloud with normal
intonation, allowing 10 sec between proverbs. At the end of each list, the
experimenter read four strings of seven-digit numbers, which the subjects
wrote on designated pages of their answer booklets. Immediately following the digit-recall task, the subjects responded to the memory test.
Approximately 1 min elapsed between the reading of the last proverb and
the beginning of the memory test.
Each subject received only one of the four types of recognition
memory tests. Subjects receiving the test for optional syntactic structure
and those receiving the test for lexical information were instructed to
select the proverbs which were identical to the acquisition proverbs and
were given examples of the type of test items they would receive.
Subjects who received the test for literai meaning were instructed to
select the proverbs with the same literal meaning as the acquisition
proverbs, and those who received the test for figurative meaning were
instructed to select the proverbs with the same figurative meaning.
Subjects in the latter two conditions were given examples of literal and
figurative meaning and examples of the type of test items they would
receive. Items in the memory test were arranged in the same order as the
acquisition list. However, the subjects were tested only on the 20
experimental proverbs and not on the 18 filler proverbs from the
acquisition lists.
This procedure was followed for subjects in each of two comprehension conditions. Subjects in the deep comprehension condition also
responded to the comprehension item for the preceding proverb during
the 10-sec interval between the proverbs on the acquisition list. Immediately after hearing each proverb the subjects in this condition turned to
the next page in their answer booklet and had 10 sec to respond to the
two-alternative forced-choice comprehension item. They were instructed
that they were participating in an experiment on the comprehension and
memory of proverbs, and that they would be given multiple-choice tests
both for their understanding and memory of the proverbs they heard.
Subjects in the normal comprehension condition were told that they were
participating in an experiment on memory for proverbs and that they
would he give(i ii multiple-choice test on their ability to remember the
proverbs read to them.
Subjects were run in small groups. The type of memory task was
counterbalanced across subjects so that different subjects within the same
group received different memory tests.
RESULTS
The percentages of correct recognition responses in the normal
comprehension and deep comprehension conditions for the four recognition memory tasks are given in Table 111. Binomial tests for both items
and subjects for each type of recognition memory in each comprehension
condition showed that recognition memory was significantly greater than
chance (except for subjects in the literal rneaninglnormal comprehension
treatment combination), p < 0.05 for all tests.
A n analysis of variance was carried out on the recognition memory
responses with both subjects and sentences as random effects (Clark,
1973). Following Clark's notation, F , refers to the test statistic appropriate to the design with subjects as the random effect and F, to the test
statistic appropriate to the design with items as the randomeffect. The
interaction between comprehension condition and type of recognition
memory test was significant. F , (3. 72) = 5.10, F, (3, 57) = 10.84, min F
( 3 . 122) = 3.47, p < 0.05. so the scores for normal comprehension were
compared with the scores for deep comprehension for each type of
recognition test. The analysis for the figurative meaning task showed that
recognition memory in the deep comprehenson condition was significantly superior to recognition memory in the normal comprehension
condition, F , ( I , 18) = 7.93. Fi d ,19) = 16.48, min F' ( 1 , 3 2 ) = 5 . 3 5 . ~<
0.05. Similar analyses for the other recognition memory tasks showed no
significant differences.
Table 111. Percent Come^-: Ret-ogmtion Responses under Two Levels of
Comprehension
Recognition t e i f
Yormiil comprchen\ion
Deep comprehension
Figur;iti\,e
Literal
l,e\ii:til
Syntxtic
77.5
76.5
95.5
80.0
89.5
85.5
91.0
70.0
-
, ,
6s
Bock and Brewer
Examination of the responses on the comprehension task showed
that 84% of the responses were correct, suggesting that subjects were
reasonably accurate in interpreting the figurative meanings of the
proverbs.
DISCUSSION
The dual finding that memory for the figurative level of meaning was
above chance in the normal comprehension condition, and was significantly improved by requiring subjects to identify instances or paraphrases
of the figurative meaning during acquisition, supports the hypothesis that
subjects can understand and later recognize the figurative meaning of an
unfamiliar proverb presented in isolation. These results are most easily
explained by theories of processing which suggest that figurative meaning
comprehension is associated with qualitatively different processing than
literal meaning comprehension. Such an approach to metaphor is suggested by Kintsch (1972) and Weinreich (1966).
One problem for these "multiple process" accounts when applied to
proverb comprehension arises from their claim that figurative meaning
computation depends on the recognition of literal anomaly. The present
experiment suggests that literal anomaly is not a necessary condition for
the processing of figurative meaning and that such processing can be
strategically controlled by subjects. A possible solution to this problem is
to allow contextual anomaly or inappropriateness of the literal meaning of
an expression in the context of its utterance to trigger the processing of
figurative meaning. This type of solution is embodied in an account of
metaphor processing called the "pragmatics approach" by Ortony et a!.
(1978b), which derives from Grice's (1975) work on conversation and is
supported by an experiment on indirect speech by Clark and Lucy (1975).
Kintsch (1974) has made a similar suggestion. With the assumption that
figurative-level processing may also be triggered by instructions, these
multiple-process models appear to be better able to explain proverb
comprehension than continuity models.
An approach that incorporates features of both the continuity and
multiple-process views has been offered by Ortony et a / . (1978b). In an
experiment contrasting effects of short vs. long contexts on comprehension time, these investigators found that, with extensive contexts.
the times taken to process metaphors vs. literal language did not differ
significantly, but metaphorical statements took longer than literal state-
Comprehension and Memory of Proverbs
L
69
ments with sh rter contexts. With long contexts, both metaphorical and
literal statements were comprehended faster than with short contexts.
This experiment therefore suggests that it is not literal vs. figurative
language per se that triggers the use of special comprehension processes:
rather, figurative and literal language may be processed in the same way,
and both may also. on occasion, require extraordinary processing. When
normal processing breaks down, additional processing (as in the multiple
process description) is required. The distinction between literal and
figurative language, or between metaphorical and nonmetaphorical uses
of language, is therefore not a processing distinction, in this view.
This analysis accords well with the intuition that much figurative
language is processed routinely in appropriate contexts. However, in
order to account for the fact that metaphors are different from literal
language in short contexts, the analysis requires an independent definition
of metaphor. in addition to specification of the conditions for breakdowns
of processing, and a description of the additional processing procedures
employed (4Ortony. in press). The definition of metaphor would presumably establish criteria for metaphorical or figurative usage against
which particular examples could be evaluated, while the specifications of
processing failure and backup procedures should yield a taxonomy of
processing operations which is irnperfectiy correlated with the criteria ibr
metaphorical usage. The comprehension of unfamiliar proverbs in isolation found in the present experiment could then, in part, be explained in
terms of strategic use of these processing operations.
The improvement in deep comprehension recognition scores is also
consistent with the "transfer-appropriate" processing views of Bransford
and his colleagues (Bransford et a!.. 1979; Moms et ul., 1977), which
emphasize the importance of appropriate acquisition experience for
subsequent testing. A task requiring comprehension of figurative meaning
should improve recognition for figurative meaning more than for other
levels of meaning, if selective processing is possible; the results accord
with this prediction.
The findings of the present study differ substantially from several
earlier experiments which examined memory for surface information and
changes in literal meaning (Begg. 1971; Johnson-Laird and Stevenson.
19'"; Perfetti and Carson. 1973; Trembath, 1972; Sachs, 1967, 1974).
These studies generally found poor lexical memory, while the accuracy of
lexical recognition found here was quite high. However, there are some
fairly obvious differences in procedure that may account for this discrepancy. I n the present experiment. lexical information was tested in a
*
70
Bock and Brewer
forced-choice task with the original item vs. an item in which most or all
of the content words were replaced with synonyms; thus any fragmentary
information about any one of the content words would allow the subject
t o make a correct response. The previous investigations used simple
recognition for items in which only one word was replaced by a synonym,
and thus may have given an underestimate of the amount of lexical
information remembered by the subject for a given sentence. This
conclusion is supported by the work of Hayes-Roth and Hayes-Roth
( 1977).
The present study also found good recognition of optional syntactic
information, probably because of the more sensitive forced-choice
recognition procedure. It is difficult to compare this result with earlier
work on recognition for literal meaning. In the current experiment, literal
meaning was tested using an item in which the surface structure was
greatly altered, while the literal meaning was unchanged. Other studies
have used items in which the surface structure was essentially unchanged,
while the literal meaning was altered. Thus the present study examined
recognition of literal meaning, while the previous experiments investigated recognition of meaning change. Overall, the present findings agree
with observations that subjects can remcmhe! information from a variety
of processing levels (Anderson and Paulson. 1977; Kolers and Ostry.
1974).
In summary, the major results of this experiment suggest that
subjects can reliably identify the figurative meaning of proverbs presented
in isolation, and that, if appropriate comprehension activities are required, memory for this information can be selectively improved. These
findings can be best accounted for by approaches which provide for
differences in the processing of figurative and literal meaning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank Ellen Brewer for help with the data
analysis and Richard Harris, Tom Thieman. and Rose Zacks for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
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Trends in L i r ~ ~ i i i s t i cVol.
. ~ , 3 : Theoretical Foiit~datiot~.s,
-
-
,
Theoretical Formalism and the Experimental
Study of Natural Language
Frank T. Kennyl
The' failure und role oj' theore/ira/ jbrtt~~~li.\ttr
in the formulation of theories of natitrul
are de'icrihvd. F o r m a l i m is seen to consist of either the udoption of u highly
/an,y/ii~,',re
s t r ~ i c t i i r t ,preconceived
~l
.Wretn us a model f u r l/~t1,g/iu,ge
processing or the embodiment ofa
ri,yid set i ) f theoretical assumptions, or both. ,4 description of various ureas of research i s
m i d ? :tr order t o i/i2t?ion.~rt-[it1~
the (Â¥ot~sisrt~r^
fhilure of rypin'ai formal rheorit-'~t o deal
nd;'q~iart,ly~ . i r hexperimentalfinditig.\, an effect a r w e d to he 11 direct result ofthe nature of.
tlieoreticul formulism.
I:'
I
1-
I
A
I -.
INTRODUCTION
The domain of "natural language." judging from the majority of treatises
on the subject, appears so extensive that almost any aspect of human
cognitive endeavor is subject for inclusion provided that the spoken,
written. or even "thought" word is in some way, even if very remotely,
involved. Judging from recent revie\+, articles in psycholinguistics alone
(Fillenbaum, 1971; Morton, 1972; Reber, 1973; Johnson-Laird, 1974)
topics for consideration not only include the traditional triad of language
comprehension, thought, and memory but also go so far afield as
perception, social interaction. visual analysis, and so on. Despite this
aI1.-encompassing trend, each of the various disciplines (psychology,
ph~iosophy,linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computer science prim-
' f'~icuIt>of Medinne. Mernor1:il University of Newfoundland. St. John's. Newt'oundland.
C'anAhi A1B 316.
73
(K)~~o-Wl~~'XO,O
IOO-lM)?.^O.i l X ) f O
lYÈ Plenum Publishing Corporation