Abstract
The comprehension of anomalous “strings” is frequently explained in terms of their “reduction” to grammatical and literal interpretations. Although degree of departure from grammaticality (a form of anomaly) is a potent psychological variable, the actual interpretability of anomalies has not been examined. The present study establishes some criteria, based on the concept of synonymy, for deciding if a sentence is a genuine interpretation of an anomaly. Specifically, Hoffman and Honeck’s (1976) bidirectionality paradigm was used, in which in Phase 1, subjects ranked potential interpretations in terms of their similarity to poetry Unes taken from e. e. cummings; in Phase 2, different subjects ranked these lines and foil lines with respect to the interpretations. The results met all of the criteria, indicating that the presumed interpretations were genuine and that cummings’ lines are interpretable. Discussion centered on the inadequacy of the reduction view and on the need to incorporate factors (inference, world knowledge, etc.) that allow practically unlimited flexibility in theories of understanding.
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Hoffman, R. R. Conceptual base hypotheses and the problem of “meaningless” sentences. In W. Kintsch (Chair), Recent psycholinguistic research with metaphors. Symposium presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, California, August 1977.
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Preparation of a draft of this paper by the second author was supported by Grant 1T32-HD07151 to the Center for Research in Human Learning from the National Institute for Child Health and Development.
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Honeck, R.P., Hoffman, R.R. Synonymy and anomaly. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 14, 37–40 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329393
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329393