Cluster analysis of word-order judgment latencies for German active and passive sentences

A group of nine German-speaking Ss judged pairs of words as “forward” or “reversed” with regard to a previously learned sentence. Response latencies for all “forward” judgments were subjected to hierarchical cluster analysis. The resulting tree diagrams reflect some of the differences marked in the active and passive constructions in German. The results were consistent with the hypothesis that Ss store sentences as hierarchically organized subgroups.