TELLING SOMETHING WE CANT KNOW - EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHES TO VERBS EXHIBITING IMPLICIT CAUSALITY

An interpersonal verb such as annoy or admire can be categorized accor ding to whether its grammatical subject or grammatical object initiate s the interaction described by the verb. Such a verb can also be categ orized according To whether a derived adjective describes its grammati cal subject (e.g., annoying) or its grammatical object (e.g., admirabl e). Although there has been much speculation (e.g., Brown & Fish, 1983 ) that these and other characteristics of these ver bs shed light on b asic principles of human social interaction, we argue that research to date has failed to demonstrate directly any real-time consequences of these verbs during language comprehension. We present evidence that t he initiating-reacting distinction predicts an-line changes in the acc essibility of these verbs' arguments, but that the existence of a deri ved adjective does not. We conclude that tasks that question subjects explicitly about language may fail to reflect the ordinary processes o f language comprehension.