Sentence repetition, paraphrasing, and comprehension: Can you repeat a sentence without understanding it?

Abstract The present study addresses the question of whether an individual who does not understand a sentence might still be able to repeat it verbatim. To answer this question, we examined paraphrasing and repetition data from two previous studies: Pavlenko et al. (2019), which analyzed L1 and L2 participants’ paraphrasing of seven Miranda warning sentences, and Akbary et al. (2023), which compared L1 and L2 participants’ paraphrasing and elicited imitation (EI) performance on 30 commonly used EI sentences. We formulated our questions into four predictions, two of which directly addressed whether rote repetition without comprehension occurs at all. Our results confirmed both predictions, identifying 36 (5.6%) of the 646 instances of verbatim sentence repetition in the data as potential cases of repetition without comprehension. However, a broader analysis showed that the evidence for a lack of comprehension was relatively weak and ambiguous. We conclude with recommendations for overcoming the limitations of the present study and resolving the ambiguity of our findings.