Ability to stand alone and processing of open-class and closed-class words: isolation versus context.

摘要: Four experiments investigating processing of closed-class and open-class words in isolation sentence contexts are reported. Taft (1990) reported that which could not meaningfully stand alone incurred longer lexical decision responses than did control words. also were associated with Experiments 1 2 replicated 's effect ability to on presented isolation. In 3 4, the same targets as part semantically neutral context sentences a moving window paradigm. The stand-alone was present 4. results suggest Toft's conclusion meaningfulness word influences needs revision. An explanation is provided according support from message level syntactic sources influence words' perceived “meaningfulness.”