Free Recall of Self-Embedded English Sentences

T h e p r o b l e m posed for our sub jec t s in t he p resen t expe r imen t will be fami l ia r to a n y o n e who has t r i ed to discuss a lgebra over t he te lephone . It is not too difficult to indicate by appropriate emphasis and intonation that "A plus B times C" refers to A + BC, rather than to (A + B)C, but when the expression becomes only a little more complicated both talker and listener begin to flounder rather badly. Spoken communication is not the best medium for indicating parenthetical constructions. It is interesting, therefore, that in spite of our inability to cope with complicated parenthetical constructions in vocal forms, all natural languages, including English, make provision for just such constructions in the sentences we speak. For example, the sentence, The man who said that a cat killed the rat is a liar, is pe r fec t ly g r a m m a t i c a l and has one sentence (a cat killed the rat) nes ted inside of ano the r (the man who said that is a liar). B u t now ca r ry the process ano the r s tep and p u t the dog chased the cat inside a cat killed the rat, in the form of a re la t ive c lause: a cat that the dog chased killed the rat. W h e n all t h ree are p u t t oge the r