ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that the acquiring knowledge from text involves an integration of knowledge that is elicited and knowledge that is computed. It reviews evidence that interclause processing is a focal point for integrating structural and associative information in text comprehension. The chapter summarizes some of the ways in which clauses and their interrelations mediate the integration of structural and associative information. Clauses have three major roles in text comprehension: They are basic structural units, they can mediate the integration of new information and already known information, and their interrelationships contribute to semantic coherence. These studies have shown that interclause relations influence comprehender's attention to different kinds of information when listening to isolated sentences. This extends the principle that processing interclause relations is a point of interaction between associative and structural processing. Text comprehension involves an integration of linguistic structures and already known associative information.
