Learning of prose written in four grammatical transformations

Abstract

4 comparisons of pairs of grammatical transformations are reported. Active-verb transformations were found easier to learn than their nominalizations (p < .001), actives were easier to learn than their passives (p < .01), nonembedded sentences were easier to learn than their embedded counterparts (p < .05), and no significant difference was found between adjectivalizations and their counterparts using adjectives. 10 different categories of active-verb sentences and their nominalizations were examined and by determining which categories of nominalizations were responsible for deleterious effects, several rules for improving readability were reexpressed in terms of grammatical transformations. The data were also used to examine the extent to which complex sentences are recoded and stored in memory as kernels. (15 ref.) (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)