(13) Her best frenz playing jump rope.
(14) her frenz playing jump rope.
(15) Their best frenz playing jump rope.
(16) Their frenz playing jump rope.
As predicted, singular interpretaion frequencies decreased progressively from (13) through to (16), most spectacularly among black students. However, one unexpected finding was a significant number of plural reading of (15)and (16) even among the white students whose grammars were thought not to allow the deletion rule.
Berden's results confirm the extremely indirect relationship between comprehension and grammatical rules. They add to our knowledge of comprehension strategies in that they show that for some white informants, logically irrelevant linguistic cues are sufficient to override interpretations suggested by the application of grammatical rules. However, the magnitude