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.

scholarly journals Processing subject–verb agreement in a second language depends on proficiency

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
NORIKO HOSHINO ◽  
PAOLA E. DUSSIAS ◽  
JUDITH F. KROLL
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
First Language ◽  
Conceptual Information ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Speech Planning ◽  
Grammatical Number ◽  
The Way

Subject–verb agreement is a computation that is often difficult to execute perfectly in the first language (L1) and even more difficult to produce skillfully in a second language (L2). In this study, we examine the way in which bilingual speakers complete sentence fragments in a manner that reflects access to both grammatical and conceptual number. In two experiments, we show that bilingual speakers are sensitive to both grammatical and conceptual number in the L1 and grammatical number agreement in the L2. However, only highly proficient bilinguals are also sensitive to conceptual number in the L2. The results suggest that the extent to which speakers are able to exploit conceptual information during speech planning depends on the level of language proficiency.

Age of acquisition and proficiency as factors in language production: Agreement in bilinguals

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
REBECCA FOOTE
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Agreement Morphology ◽  
Grammatical Number ◽  
Verb Number

Research on the production of subject–verb number agreement in monolinguals suggests differences between and within languages in how it proceeds as a function of morphological richness. When agreement morphology is relatively rich, the influence of conceptual number over grammatical number is less than when it is relatively poor. Within the framework of Eberhard, Cutting and Bock's (2005) marking and morphing account of agreement production, this finding is explained by how number features from the syntax and the lexicon are reconciled. This study asks: (1) Can this account of differences in agreement production as a function of morphological richness be extended to the case of bilinguals? (2) Do age of acquisition and/or proficiency modulate whether these differences surface in bilinguals? Agreement production was examined in early and late English–Spanish, and late Spanish–English bilinguals of varying proficiency. Higher-proficiency bilinguals patterned similarly to monolinguals, supporting the extension of the marking and morphing account.

The nature of variable sensitivity to agreement violations in L2 English

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 115-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masanori Bannai
Keyword(s):  
Number Agreement ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
Intermediate Learners ◽  
Variable Sensitivity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Verb Number

This study focuses on the nature of variable sensitivity to violations of subject-verb number agreement in L2 English by examining Japanese-speaking learners’ performance in a self-paced reading task. The results of the experiment indicated that the learners were insensitive to agreement violations deriving from omission of 3rd person singular (3sg)-s, but were highly sensitive to violations deriving from overuse of 3sg-s. Their sensitivity to this type of violation, however, turned out to be non-categorical in that it was adversely affected by an adverb intervening between the subject and the verb. These results are interpreted to indicate that intermediate learners’ implementation of subject-verb agreement is not based on Agree operations, but on the Vocabulary entry for /s/ which is sensitive to the condition of the string of co-occurring terminal nodes as proposed by Hawkins and Casillas (2008).

scholarly journals Pronoun omission and agreement: An analysis based on ICE Singapore and ICE India

ICAME Journal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-118
Author(s):  
Iván Tamaredo ◽  
Teresa Fanego
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Inhibiting Effect ◽  
Modal Auxiliaries ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Agreement Morphology

AbstractThis article deals with pronoun omission in subject position and its connection with subject-verb agreement in Indian English and Singapore English. Agreement morphology has been found to be a predictor and facilitator of pronoun omission cross-linguistically in that it aids in the identification and retrieval of the referents of omitted pronouns. The results of a corpus study partly confirm this trend, since they show that agreement morphology does have a weak facilitating effect in both varieties examined; that is, pronoun omission increases when the subject and the verb agree in person and number. However, this is only true for lexical verbs; non-modal auxiliaries (i.e., be, have, do), on the contrary, show a low percentage of omitted pronouns and no facilitating effect of agreement morphology. To account for this finding, the possible inhibiting effect on pronoun omission of the frequency of co-occurrence of pronouns and non-modal auxiliaries was also explored.

scholarly journals THE PRODUCTION OF SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT AMONG SWEDISH AND CHINESE SECOND LANGUAGE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie N. Jackson ◽  
Elizabeth Mormer ◽  
Laurel Brehm
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Completion ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
L2 Proficiency ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Second Language Speakers ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Verb Number ◽  
L1 English

AbstractThis study uses a sentence completion task with Swedish and Chinese L2 English speakers to investigate how L1 morphosyntax and L2 proficiency influence L2 English subject-verb agreement production. Chinese has limited nominal and verbal number morphology, while Swedish has robust noun phrase (NP) morphology but does not number-mark verbs. Results showed that like L1 English speakers, both L2 groups used grammatical and conceptual number to produce subject-verb agreement. However, only L1 Chinese speakers—and less-proficient speakers in both L2 groups—were similarly influenced by grammatical and conceptual number when producing the subject NP. These findings demonstrate how L2 proficiency, perhaps combined with cross-linguistic differences, influence L2 production and underscore that encoding of noun and verb number are not independent.

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.

Phi-features reloaded: An event-related potential study on person and number agreement processing

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADAM ZAWISZEWSKI ◽  
MIKEL SANTESTEBAN ◽  
ITZIAR LAKA
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Potential Study ◽  
Electrophysiological Responses ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Number Violation ◽  
Grammatical Structures

ABSTRACTLinguistic analysis claims that verb agreement is composed of distinct phi-features such as person and number, but are these different phi-features processed distinctly or similarly? We used a sentence grammaticality task to explore the electrophysiological responses of Basque speakers when processing subject–verb person and number phi-feature agreement violations. We generated grammatical structures (grammatical control) and ungrammatical structures in which the verb disagreed with the subject in person (person violation), in number (number violation), or in both person and number features (person+number violation). Behavioral data revealed that, overall, participants were faster and more accurate detecting person and person+number violations than violations involving only number. Event-related potential responses revealed a N400–P600 pattern for all violation types. Person and person+number violations elicited larger P600 effects than number violations. These findings reveal different costs related to the processing of person and number phi-feature agreement and indicate that these features are distinct components of agreement computation.

scholarly journals Subject-verb Agreement in Constructions with Quantifiers in Russian

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Anna Aksenova
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Regression Algorithms ◽  
The Subject

The agreement of subject and predicate in Russian is actually much less trivial than it might seem at first glance. This paper deals with the case when the subject is realized by a combination of a noun with a quantifier. I analyze a set of examples with the words двое, трое, пара, тройка, десяток, сотня, тысяча, миллион and миллиард where there is a variation in predicate number agreement. Using Random Forest, CIT and Logistic Regression algorithms I prove that collective (двое, трое) and non-collective (пара, тройка, десяток, сотня, тысяча, миллион, миллиард) quantifiers exhibit different patterns of agreement. The first group tends to trigger more plural agreement, while for the second one singular agreement is more typical. Moreover, the quantifier phrase position relative to the predicate can also influence the choice of number marker on the verb.

Singular Agreement in Special Partitive Constructions in Dutch

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-370
Author(s):  
Lotte Hogeweg ◽  
Stefanie Ramachers ◽  
Helen de Hoop
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Specific Function ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Dominant Pattern ◽  
Syntactic Pattern ◽  
The Subject

Dutch partitive constructions of the type one of the (few) X who Y show a striking pattern of singular subject-verb agreement in their relative clause. This paper presents a corpus study showing that the prescriptively “incorrect” singular agreement pattern is in fact the dominant pattern in Dutch. In order to explain this, we argue that this type of partitive construction often has a specific function in context, namely, to point out that the subject is special or extraordinary, usually for the reason presented by the relative clause. We apply a usage-based approach to this construction within the framework of Construction Grammar, arguing that the prevalent implicature of the subject’s specialness has become a conventionalized part of the meaning of the construction. This analysis then can be used to explain the syntactic pattern of singular agreement within the relative clause. A similar albeit less pronounced pattern can be found in German.*

From emergence to acquisition

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fethi Mansouri
Keyword(s):  
Information Structures ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Agreement Morphology ◽  
And Gender

Abstract This paper concerns the emergence and development of agreement marking in Arabic interlanguage. It investigates the effect of competing structures (pragmatics, semantics and morphosyntax) on the development of Arabic subject-verb agreement morphology. It is hypothesised that Arabic Interlanguage morphology is constrained by the availability of processing strategies (Clahsen, 1986) and competing information structures (Bates and McWhinney, 1981; 1987) especially when dealing with complex agreement patterns. The results show that linguistic complexity (a) influences the types of processing strategies employed and (b) determines the order of acquisition of different agreement patterns. It is also revealed that when the three information structures compete for interpretation of speech, morphosyntax emerges as the least influential eventhough it seems that S-V agreement in Arabic, at least on the surface, is essentially a transfer of morphosyntactic features (person, number and gender) from the subject onto the verb.

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