Thematization and sentence retrieval

The effectiveness of words from sentences as retrieval prompts for sentence meaning is shown to depend upon thematization. When a sentence was presented in isolation, without context, and when the imagery and concreteness of the subject-noun and object-noun were high and equal, there was no difference between the two nouns in prompt effectiveness. For example, in The serfs rebelled against the baron, serfs and baron were equally good prompts for retrieval of the sentence. When the sentence appeared at the end of a paragraph, the retrieval power of both nouns was greatly increased. However when the subject ( serfs ) was the theme of the paragraph, the subject was a much better prompt than the object. When the object ( baron ) was the theme, subject and object were again equal. These results are explained in terms of the discourse function of thematization.