The interplay of syntax and form in sentence production: A cross-linguistic study of form effects on agreement

We report four cross-linguistic experiments (in Spanish, Italian and French) testing the influence of morphophonological gender marking in the subject noun phrase on the production of gender agreement. Agreement errors are elicited using a methodology in which participants are required to complete, with a predicative adjective, a sentence preamble. Results confirm a role for morphophonological gender marking in agreement. More precisely, we show that this role varies with two factors of different nature. The first factor is structural and has to do with the position of the marker in the noun phrase (article vs. noun). The second factor is distributional and has to do with the validity of the marker in the language. A model of agreement production is proposed in which two functionally distinct processes are identified: Feature selection, the locus of the morphophonological influences, and Feature copy, operating under strict syntactic guidance.

[1]  Vicki Carstens,et al.  Concord in Minimalist Theory , 2000, Linguistic Inquiry.

[2]  Brian Butterworth,et al.  Subject-verb agreement in Spanish and English: Differences in the role of conceptual constraints , 1996, Cognition.

[3]  Luigi Rizzi,et al.  Agreement and tense as distinctive syntactic positions. Evidence from acquisition , 2002 .

[4]  M. Picallo,et al.  NOMINALS AND NOMINALIZATIONS IN CATALAN , 1991 .

[5]  Janet L Nicol,et al.  6. The effect of case marking on subject-verb agreement errors in English , 2009 .

[6]  G Vigliocco,et al.  Syntactic Accuracy in Sentence Production: The Case of Gender Disagreement in Italian Language-Impaired and Unimpaired Speakers , 1999, Journal of psycholinguistic research.

[7]  Kathryn Bock,et al.  Language production : Grammatical encoding , 1994 .

[8]  J. Nicol,et al.  Separating hierarchical relations and word order in language production: is proximity concord syntactic or linear? , 1998, Cognition.

[9]  B. Rapp,et al.  Discreteness and interactivity in spoken word production. , 2000, Psychological review.

[10]  K. Bock,et al.  Broken agreement , 1991, Cognitive Psychology.

[11]  Gary S. Dell,et al.  Stages in sentence production: An analysis of speech error data , 1981 .

[12]  W. Levelt,et al.  Speaking: From Intention to Articulation , 1990 .

[13]  Robert J Hartsuiker,et al.  Morphophonological influences on the construction of subject – verb agreement , 2004 .

[14]  Matthew A Goldrick,et al.  Limited interaction in speech production: Chronometric, speech error, and neuropsychological evidence , 2006 .

[15]  Michel Hupet,et al.  Effects of semantic variables on the subject-verb agreement processes in writing , 1998 .

[16]  Janet L. McDonald,et al.  Properties of Phonological Markers That Affect the Acquisition of Gender-Like Subclasses☆☆☆★ , 1998 .

[17]  K. Bock,et al.  The Ties That Bind: Creating Number Agreement in Speech , 1999 .

[18]  Masuyo Ito,et al.  The logically possible range of sentence types versus the actual production of English-speaking children--On Schutze, Carson(1997):INFL in child and adult language:Agreement, Case and licensing. Ph.D.dissertation, MIT , 2000 .

[19]  J. Zwart.  The Minimalist Program , 1998, Journal of Linguistics.

[20]  Robert J. Hartsuiker,et al.  Are speech error patterns affected by a monitoring bias? , 2006 .

[21]  Kathryn Bock,et al.  Meaning, sound and syntax in english number agreement , 1993 .

[22]  Kathryn Bock,et al.  Toward a Cognitive Psychology of Syntax: Information Processing Contributions to Sentence Formulation , 1982 .

[23]  Willem J. M. Levelt,et al.  A theory of lexical access in speech production , 1999, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[24]  Victor S Ferreira,et al.  Language production. , 2010, Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science.

[25]  Robert J. Hartsuiker,et al.  Object Attraction in Subject-Verb Agreement Construction , 2001 .

[26]  Robert J. Hartsuiker,et al.  One or more labels on the bottles? Notional concord in Dutch and French , 1996 .

[27]  G. Vigliocco,et al.  When Sex and Syntax Go Hand in Hand: Gender Agreement in Language Production , 1999 .

[28]  G S Dell,et al.  A spreading-activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. , 1986, Psychological review.

[29]  Gabriella Vigliocco,et al.  When Sex Affects Syntax: Contextual Influences in Sentence Production , 2001 .

[30]  Antje S. Meyer,et al.  Representations and Processes in the Production of Pronouns: Some Perspectives from Dutch☆☆☆ , 1999 .

[31]  Brian Butterworth,et al.  Constructing Subject-Verb Agreement in Speech: The Role of Semantic and Morphological Factors , 1995 .

[32]  Y. Levy.  It's frogs all the way down , 1983, Cognition.

[33]  Carson T. Schütze.  INFL in child and adult language : agreement, case and licensing , 1997 .

[34]  M. Garrett.  Levels of processing in sentence production , 1980 .

[35]  K. Bock,et al.  Some Attractions of Verb Agreement , 2001, Cognitive Psychology.

[36]  E. Ritter.  Where's gender? , 1993 .

[37]  K. Bock.  Regulating mental energy: Performance units in language production , 1992 .

[38]  K. Bock,et al.  Producing number agreement: How pronouns equal verbs , 2004 .

[39]  Patricia J. Brooks,et al.  Acquisition of Gender-like Noun Subclasses in an Artificial Language: The Contribution of Phonological Markers to Learning , 1993 .

[40]  Maryellen C. MacDonald,et al.  The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution , 1994 .

[41]  Merrill F. Garrett,et al.  Remarks on the Architecture of Language Processing Systems , 2000 .

[42]  J. Lorber,et al.  What is Gender? , 2001, American Sociological Review.

[43]  M. MacDonald,et al.  Conflicting cues and competition in subject-verb agreement , 2003 .

[44]  Gabriella Vigliocco,et al.  Subject-verb agreement errors in French and English: The role of syntactic hierarchy , 2002 .

[45]  Eric S Solomon,et al.  Semantic integration and syntactic planning in language production , 2004, Cognitive Psychology.

[46]  M. Pérez-Pereira,et al.  The acquisition of gender: what Spanish children tell us , 1991, Journal of Child Language.

[47]  Anna Cardinaletti,et al.  Agreement and control in expletive constructions , 1997 .

[48]  J. Aitchinson.  The crosslinguistic study of sentence processing , 1993, Journal of Child Language.

[49]  R. Hartsuiker,et al.  The interplay of meaning, sound, and syntax in sentence production. , 2002, Psychological bulletin.

[50]  J. Cain,et al.  Acquisition strategies in a first and second language: are they the same? , 1987, Journal of Child Language.

[51]  Kathleen M. Eberhard,et al.  The Accessibility of Conceptual Number to the Processes of Subject–Verb Agreement in English☆☆☆ , 1999 .

[52]  Roman Taraban,et al.  Gender processing in native and nonnative Russian speakers , 1999, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[53]  Alfonso Caramazza,et al.  The production of pronominal clitics: Implications for theories of lexical access , 2006 .

[54]  W. Lambert,et al.  The French Speaker's Skill with Grammatical Gender: An Example of Rule-Governed Behavior , 1977 .

[55]  B. MacWhinney,et al.  Functionalism and the competition model , 1989 .

[56]  Kathryn Bock,et al.  Making syntax of sense: number agreement in sentence production. , 2005, Psychological review.

[57]  Luigi Rizzi,et al.  Agreement and movement: A syntactic analysis of attraction , 2006, Cognition.

[58]  V. M. Holmes,et al.  Assignment of grammatical gender by native speakers and foreign learners of French , 1999, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[59]  Ulrich H. Frauenfelder,et al.  Normal and pathological development of subject–verb agreement in speech production: a study on French children , 2004, Journal of Neurolinguistics.

[60]  W. Levelt,et al.  Monitoring and self-repair in speech , 1983, Cognition.

[61]  Maryellen C. MacDonald,et al.  Plausibility and grammatical agreement , 2003 .