Drawing Inferences from Semantically Positive and Negative Implicative Predicates / Stella Vosniadou.

A study investigated the inferential processing involved in the comprehension of a class of complex predicates (such as "remember to,""manage to,""fail to," and "neglect to") that are known as implicative. The subjects, 64 college students, were timed while they drew inferences from syntactically affirmative and negative sentences containing the implicative predicates "remember/forget" and "bother/neglect" in different linguistic contexts that met the presuppositions of the sentences at varying levels of generality. Different patterns of inference latencies were obtained for the two implicative predicates studied, suggesting that there are important differences among negative implicative predicates that influence their representation and processing. Regardless of these differences, inference latencies for all sentences decreased when they were presented in contexts that met some of their presuppositions indicating that context can facilitate inferential processing. (FL)

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