| Clause Type and Structural Location: Testing Gopen's Theories of Reader Expectation. By Jennifer L. May Background Information It is generally agreed upon that readers make interpretations and judgments regarding the material that they read. One useful way of examining the way in which readers interpret information is through ambiguous stimuli. Numerous investigations have demonstrated that ambiguous sentences, such as garden-paths, require the reader to make an interpretive decision, such as high or low attachment (Sturt et. al., 2002; Grodner et al., 2002; Trueswell, 1996; Frazier & Frodor, 1978). Other research has looked at the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns and anaphors based on structural cues (Badecker & Straub, 2002). Gopen and Swan (1990) posit that understanding of the way in which readers interpret written information is essential for accurate communication. They claim that because readers of English read from left to right, readers expect to encounter contextual information at the beginning on sentences and the weighted, new information of the sentence at the end. They call this "end" a "stress position." A stress position is a structural location at the end of a unit of discourse such as a sentence, paragraph, chapter, or overall body of work (Gopen & Swan, 1990). "Stressed" information is not necessarily single word and can occur in various sizes. The marker of a stress position, however, is full syntactic closure, signaled by a period, semicolon, or colon (Gopen & Swan, 1990). Gopen's theories of reader expectation are intuitive, as well as based on years of classroom experience. One way in which Gopen (2002) illustrates the role of reader interpretation to his classes is by presenting them with a sentence containing contradictory information, such as "Fred is a nice guy, but he beats his dog." Like the garden path, it is ambiguous and requires that the reader make a decision. Gopen then goes on to present the same information about Fred while manipulating the structure of his sentences, stating, "Fred beats his dog, but he is a nice guy." He inverts the structure of his sentence to see how that affects the way in which his class judges the fictitious character of Fred. Directory listings for Rated 5 Stars: |
