scholarly journals Agreement Attraction in Turkish: The Case of Genitive Attractor

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Utku Turk ◽  
Pavel Logacev
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Feature Matching ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Attraction Effects ◽  
Potential Confound ◽  
Acceptability Judgment ◽  
Genitive Case

Previous studies have shown that speakers may find sentences violating subject-verb agreement grammatical when the sentence contains a feature-matching noun phrase. This so-called agreement attraction effect has also been found in genitive possessive structures such as 'the teacher's brother' in Turkish (Lago et al., 2019), which is in contrast with its absence in similar constructions in English (Nicol et al., 2016). This discrepancy has been hypothesized to be a result of the association between genitive case marking and subjecthood in Turkish, but not in English. In the present research, we test an alternative explanation in which Turkish number agreement attraction effects are due to a potential confound in Lago et al.'s experiment, as a result of which subject head nouns were locally ambiguous between the possessive and the accusative case. We hypothesized that this ambiguity may have inhibited the availability of the head noun as an agreement controller as the accusative is a non-subject case in Turkish. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a speeded acceptability judgment experiment and our results suggest that case-ambiguity does not play a role in agreement attraction, and thus lends credibility to the claim that genitive noun phrases may function as attractors in Turkish due to the association between genitive case and subjecthood.

scholarly journals Conceptual effects on agreement: A corpus study of mismatch in English copular constructions

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Cecily Jill Duffield
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Information ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Agreement Morphology ◽  
Grammatical Number ◽  
Verb Number ◽  
Conceptual Relationship

Research on the production of subject-verb agreement has focused on the features of the subject rather than the larger construction in which subject-verb agreement is produced or how the conceptual relationship between subjects and predicates may interact in affecting subject-verb agreement patterns. This corpus study describes subject-verb number agreement mismatch in English copular constructions which take the frame of (SEMANTICALLY LIGHT) N + [REL] + COP + (SPECIFIC) PRED NOM, where the copula reflects the grammatical number of the predicate. Results suggest that speakers make use of conceptual information from the entire construction, and not just the subject, when formulating agreement morphology.

Case inflection of construct-state constructions in Dinka

Linguistics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
The State ◽  
State Information ◽  
Lexical Tones

AbstractDinka, a Nilo-Saharan language, is largely monosyllabic, nevertheless it has a fairly rich morphology. Thus, most of its morphology is expressed by alternations in phonological material of the root. The inflectional categories of nouns manifested in this way include state and case in addition to number. The state category consists of an “absolute” state and two “construct” states. The case category includes a nominative, a genitive, an allative, and an essive/ablative. The present article shows how case inflection is manifested in complex noun phrases consisting of a noun in a construct state and a following modifier. It is demonstrated that the case inflection of such noun phrases is manifested almost exclusively by tonal overlays on the nominative (lexical) tones, and that such overlays may occur either in the head or in the modifier or in both the head and the modifier. In this way, a head noun may simultaneously carry state information and case information. Thus, the case inflection of construct-state constructions in Dinka adds yet another layer of nonlinear morphology to nouns in this language.

Case Variation in Eastern Polynesian Spatial PPs

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-83
Author(s):  
David J. Medeiros
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Feature ◽  
Feature Matching ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Distributed Morphology ◽  
Common Pattern ◽  
Spatial Prepositions ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Genitive Case

This chapter examines variation in terms of case marking within complex spatial prepositions in Hawaiian and Māori. A dialect difference is proposed such that post-revitalization Māori patterns with Hawaiian in the realization of genitive case within spatial prepositions (the cross-linguistically more common pattern), to the exclusion of pre-revitalization Māori. Working within a model in which genitive case within spatial prepositions follows from syntactic structure, the unexpected non-genitive marking in pre-revitalization Māori is linked to the grammar of possession in that language, as contrasted with Hawaiian and post-revitalization Māori. The specific case marking variation is modeled in terms of morphological feature matching in a Distributed Morphology framework. Therefore, independent properties of the grammar of possession accounts for the observed micro-variation.

Object attraction effects during subject-verb agreement in Persian

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 742-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aazam Feiz ◽  
Wind Cowles
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Production ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Grammatical Errors ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Attraction Effects ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Attraction Errors

Subject-verb agreement provides insight into how grammatical and semantic features interact during sentence production, and prior studies have found attraction errors when an intervening local noun is grammatically part of the subject. Two major types of theories have emerged from these studies: control based and competition-based. The current study used an subject-object-verb language with optional subject-verb agreement, Persian, to test the competition-based hypothesis that intervening object nouns may also cause attraction effects, even though objects are not part of the syntactic relationship between the subject and verb. Our results, which did not require speakers to make grammatical errors, show that objects can be attractors for agreement, but this effect appears to be dependent on the type of plural marker on the object. These results support competition-based theories of agreement production, in which agreement may be influenced by attractors that are outside the scope of the subject-verb relationship.

scholarly journals Definiteness agreement and the pragmatics of reference in the Maltese NP

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-198
Author(s):  
Albert Gatt
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Production Study ◽  
The Status

Abstract Maltese noun phrases exhibit ‘definiteness agreement’ between head noun and modifier. However, the status of this phenomenon as a case of true morphosyntactic agreement has been disputed, given its apparent optionality. The present paper presents a corpus-based study of the distribution of adjectives with and without definite marking, and then tests the pragmatic licensing claim through a production study. Speakers were found to be more likely to use definite adjectives in referential noun phrases when the adjectives had a specifically contrastive function. This result is discussed in the context of both theoretical and psycholinguistic work on the pragmatics of referentiality.

Gender agreement in L3 English by Basque/Spanish bilinguals

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ainara Imaz Agirre ◽  
María del Pilar García Mayo
Keyword(s):  
Head Noun ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Attraction Effects ◽  
Nominal Agreement ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Spanish Bilinguals

This study investigates knowledge of the nominal agreement domain in L3 English by Basque/Spanish bilinguals. Gender agreement has been claimed to be an interpretable feature in English and could be claimed to be so for Basque, whereas Spanish shows uninterpretable gender agreement. Under current representational and computational accounts posited to explain variability in L2 learner production, interpretable features are acquirable. The participants in the present study (n=34) were Basque/Spanish bilinguals of two proficiency levels in English (intermediate and advanced) and a control group of English native speakers (n=17). They completed two oral production tasks (elicitation and picture narration tasks). Results from both tasks indicate that Basque/Spanish bilinguals seem to have acquired gender agreement in L3 English but still have production problems which could be explained on the basis of linguistic features (animacy) and gender attraction effects of the Spanish head noun as well as the different proficiency levels.

scholarly journals SYNTACTICAL ERROR ANALYSIS ON REPORT TEXT

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-129
Author(s):  
Soraya Grabiella Dinamika ◽  
Ridwan Hanafiah
Keyword(s):  
Error Analysis ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Analysis Theory ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
Report Text

This study aims at investigating and classifying the syntactical errors in the writing of report text made by 20 students of Department of English Literature of FIB-USU. Syntactical errors in writing made by EFL students are needed to be investigated by using the Error Analysis theory developed by Gass & Selinker in 2008 as it provides six appropriate investigation procedures, namely; collecting data, identifying errors, classifying errors, quantifying errors, analyzing errors and remediation.  Each of students was assigned to write a topic-based report text with the length of 150 up to 250 words in count. This study dealt with a qualitative descriptive approach. After the EA procedures applied, in this study found that the students made major syntactical errors within the use of article ‘a/an’,’ the’ in terms of omission and addition of articles, the use of relative pronoun, and the use of subject-verb agreement in terms of past tense agreement and number agreement. Based on the error analysis procedure applied, it was obtained that the most predominant syntactical errors made by the students was the use of article which comprises of 125 errors (50.2%), followed by the use of subject-verb agreement with 117 errors (47%) and followed by the use of relative pronoun as the least error which comprises of 7 errors (2.8%). The syntactical error made by the students caused by two major sources, intra-language error and intra-language error. By seeing at these problematic areas, the researcher has suggested to take out several related pedagogical remediation to the students.

scholarly journals prosody of Símákonde relative clauses

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 159-185
Author(s):  
Sophie Manus
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
Prosodic Phrase ◽  
Final Stress ◽  
The Relationship

Símákonde is an Eastern Bantu language (P23) spoken by immigrant Mozambican communities in Zanzibar and on the Tanzanian mainland. Like other Makonde dialects and other Eastern and Southern Bantu languages (Hyman 2009), it has lost the historical Proto-Bantu vowel length contrast and now has a regular phrase-final stress rule, which causes a predictable bimoraic lengthening of the penultimate syllable of every Prosodic Phrase. The study of the prosody / syntax interface in Símákonde Relative Clauses requires to take into account the following elements: the relationship between the head and the relative verb, the conjoint / disjoint verbal distinction and the various phrasing patterns of Noun Phrases. Within Símákonde noun phrases, depending on the nature of the modifier, three different phrasing situations are observed: a modifier or modifiers may (i) be required to phrase with the head noun, (ii) be required to phrase separately, or (iii) optionally phrase with the head noun.  

scholarly journals Number Dissimilarity Effects in Object-Initial Sentence Comprehension by German-Speaking Children With Specific Language Impairment

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Maja Stegenwallner-Schütz ◽  
Flavia Adani
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Singular Noun ◽  
Comprehension Accuracy

Purpose This study examines the contribution of number morphology to language comprehension abilities among children with specific language impairment (SLI) and age-matched controls. It addresses the question of whether number agreement facilitates the comprehension accuracy of object-initial declarative sentences. According to the predictions of the structural intervention account for German, number agreement should assist the correct interpretation of object-initial sentences. Method This study examines German-speaking children with SLI and a control group of age-matched typically developing children on their sentence comprehension skills for auditory presented subject–verb–object and object–verb–subject (OVS) sentences. The sentences were manipulated with respect to the number properties of the noun phrases (e.g., one plural and one singular, or both singular) and the number agreement of the verb. Results The group of children with SLI demonstrated poorer comprehension accuracy in comparison to controls. Comprehension difficulty was limited to OVS sentences among children with SLI. In addition, children with SLI comprehended OVS sentences in which number agreement (with plural subject and verb inflection) indicated the noncanonical word order more accurately than OVS sentences with two singular noun phrases and therein did not differ from controls. Conclusion The study suggests that number agreement helps alleviate the difficulty with OVS sentences and enhances comprehension accuracy, despite the finding that children with SLI exhibit lower comprehension accuracy and more heterogeneous interindividual differences, relative to controls. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13718029

scholarly journals Gradience in subject–verb number agreement: Can bilinguals tune in?

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 1523-1551
Author(s):  
Anna Jessen ◽  
Lara Schwarz ◽  
Claudia Felser
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Bilingual Group ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Verb Number

AbstractThis study investigates native German speakers’ and bilingual Turkish/German speakers’ sensitivity to constraints on verbal agreement with pseudo-partitive subjects such as eine Packung Tabletten (“a pack of pills”). Although number agreement with the first noun phrase (headed by a container noun) is considered to be the norm, agreement with the second (containee) noun phrase is also possible. We combined scalar acceptability ratings with a stochastic constraint-based grammatical framework to model the relative strength of the constraints that determine speakers’ agreement preferences and subsequently tested whether these models could correctly predict speakers’ verb choices in a production task. For both participant groups, number match between the container noun phrase and the verb was the strongest determinant of both acceptability and production choices. The relative ranking of the constraints that we identified was the same for both groups, and the lack of age-of-acquisition effects suggests that constraints on variable subject–verb agreement, and their relative strength, are acquirable by both early and later learners of German. Group differences were seen in the absolute constraint weightings, however, with the bilinguals’ agreement preferences being more strongly influenced by number match with the containee phrase, indicating a comparatively greater reliance on surface-level cues to agreement (such as noun proximity) among the bilingual group.

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