Abstract
Subjects were given reversible and nonreversible active and passive sentences, and selected either definite or indefinite articles for the nominals in each sentence. Experiment I used sentences with the first nominal marked for definiteness, and subjects selected the article for the second nominal. Experiment II had subjects select articles for both nominals. It was found in both experiments that sentence voice affected the marking of the second nominal in reversible sentences, but that sentence voice had no effect in nonreversible sentences. Instead, the marking of the second nominal in nonreversible sentences was affected by the article assigned to the first nominal, but there was no similar effect within reversible sentences. These results are related to suggestions of differential depth of processing for reversible and nonreversible sentences, to the stronger topic-comment distinction within passives than within actives, and to the function of articles in explicating case relations.
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