PARTICIPANT ROLES AND THE PROCESSING OF VERBS DURING SENTENCE COMPREHENSION

This paper explores the nature of thematic information made available when a verb is accessed during sentence comprehension. Following Shapi ro, Zurif, and Grimshaw (1987), a cross-modal lexical decision (interf erence) task was employed to examine whether either the number of argu ment structures or the number of participant (thematic) roles inherent in a verb cause an increase in processing load upon access of the ver b. Ii was determined that there was no evidence for such an increased processing load covarying with the number of argument structures of th e verb, at least for those verb types examined in this study. However, there was an increase in processing load as a direct function of the number of participant roles carried by the verb. It is concluded that the participant roles (thematic roles associated with the central mean ing of the verb) are stored with the representation of a verb and ave made immediately available upon access of the verb for further process ing during comprehension.