In this paper, I argue that semantic and pragmatic properties—as opposed to syntactic properties—are responsible for the variability found with transitive uses of change of state verbs. In particular, a variety of factors combine together to determine the argument expression options associated with an individual verb. These factors include controllability (the degree to which an event can be externally manipulated), causer type (whether the event is human driven or nonhuman driven), and subject-modification (whether the causer is in a modified or unmodified form). Finally, I argue that it is possible to predict how acceptable a verb sounds in a transitive construction by a statistical model that combines and weights these different factors.
Investigations of first names in English have found that male and female names are distinguished by different phonological characteristics. This paper reports on findings that suggest native speakers of English rely on those same cues when making judgments about the sex of names with which they are unfamiliar. When presented with 40 novel, i.e., "invented" names, 25 university undergraduates judged one-syllable names and consonant-final names as male names; however, they judged two-syllable names and vowel-final names as female names. These findings indicate that certain phonological features are strong enough predictors of sex that they can be used to designate sex even with names never before encountered.
When evaluating potential new courses, students take into account the address forms of the instructors. Seventy college students rated the desirability of courses based on their syllabus descriptions. Syllabi differed only in the presentation of the instructors' names with seven variations in their address listings: Dr, Professor, Mr, Ms, Mrs, Miss, or No Title. Results indicate that instructors' address forms had a significant effect on course ratings. Specifically, courses with the instructor labeled with an academic title (i.e., Professor, Dr) received higher ratings than those with a generic title (i.e., Mr, Ms, Mrs, Miss), and those with a male address form received higher ratings than those with a female address form. Unlike previous studies, the three female titles of address -Ms, Mrs, and Miss -were evaluated similarly, suggesting that connotative differences in meaning among these address forms are disappearing.
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