PSYC 2650 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: The Eraser, Verb Phrase, Dick Cavett
12 Dec 2012
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Document Summary
The hierarchical division of the sentence into units called phrases, language is one of those topics that can be very technical. Some of that technical content is not necessary for an introductory cognition course. Phrases are smaller than sentences but still possess conceptual meaning: np: noun phrase, vp: verb phrase. Parsing: understanding what other people are saying to you. Some people you speak to are easy to understand and other people are more difficult to understand. Form a and form b are written the same way but read differently: commas something you use as a writer to give the reader a clue about when to parse, as a speaker, the comma introduces a pause. Pauses indicate when the listener should think about what you have just said. Form b sounds strange when it is read aloud because breaks were inserted in the middle phrases instead of at phrase boundaries like in form a.
