What Do People Think About Think?
Date
1989
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
A new sense of the verb think has recently developed in the
English language, new because think can now take a direct object
that is a noun phrase, without requiring an object complement.
The question addressed in this study was whether processing
sentences with think + D.O. is more difficult than processing those
with the older forms. The answer to this question seems to be a
function of how acceptable this form of think is today, as
determined by analyzing response times and subject evaluations.
There was evidence that processing this form is indeed more
difficult, though this is manifested only in relatively short
sentences. The new think is thus somewhat accepted, but not
completely so. Subject evaluations of better and worse think +
D.O. constructions indicate that this form is common enough that
people have definite restrictions on just what environments it can
occur in. These restrictions further imply a distinct semantic
meaning associated with the new think as compared to its older
senses.