ABSTRACT
Consider the sentence, Carol forgot about the turkey she was roasting. The text base representation of this sentence consists of an integrated network of the propositions PI (FORGET, CAROL, P2), P2 (ROAST, CAROL, TURKEY). The theorists who first presented this view soon considered the possibility that the resulting network might include propositions and propositional arguments that were not mentioned in the message (e.g., Johnson, Bransford, & Solomon, 1973; Kintsch & Keenan, 1973). For the sentence about Carol, it seems sensible to consider the possibility that the consequence that THE TURKEY BURNED is also stored in memory. Likewise, one might deduce that an oven was used to roast the turkey. The term inference processes will refer to the mental operations whereby the language understander extracts from a message implied propositions such as THE TURKEY BURNED and implied concepts such as OVEN.
