# LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST · 1994 · $90,748

## Abstract

The goal of the proposed research is to develop a theory of how people
use knowledge of their language to comprehend sentences they read or
hear.  Experiments are proposed that examine the cognitive processes of
normal, intact adults during reading or listening.  The experiments are
designed to uncover the principles that govern readers' and listeners'
use of grammatical information in sentence parsing, and is predicated on
the assumption that these principles will form a distinct subset of the
principles that govern cognition in general.

The primary innovation of the present proposal is its claim that two
different types of phrases are processed quite differently.  "Primary
relations" (arguments and obligatory constituents of main predicates, and
their arguments and obligatory dependents) are processed according to
principles we have advanced earlier.  They are attached into a single,
determinate syntactic structure which is then interpreted semantically.
"Nonprimary relations" (phrases which cannot be primary relations) are
associated with a thematically-defined domain of a sentence, and semantic
and nonlinguistic sources of information can be used (following a process
we call "construal") to determine their specific association within this
domain.

The proposed research uses a variety of techniques of experimental
cognitive psychology to test these new claims about construal and to
continue our previous research on syntactic processing principles.  It
is designed to contribute to the development of psycholinguistic theory.
Recent advances in psycholinguistic theory have had substantial impact
on the analysis of language disorders, especially aphasia.  We anticipate
that these new analyses will lead to increased understanding and,
hopefully, improved treatment of such disorders.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 2197721
- **Project number:** 5R01HD018708-14
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
- **SAM.gov UEI:** VGJHK59NMPK9
- **Principal Investigator:** CHARLES E. CLIFTON
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 1994
- **Award amount:** $90,748
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1984-06-01 → 1997-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/2197721

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 2197721, LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION (5R01HD018708-14). Retrieved via MORVS 2026-10-25 from https://api.morvs.ai/grant/nih/2197721. Licensed CC0.

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