Production of subject-verb agreement in Slovene and English
This thesis explores the mental representation of subject-verb agreement, and the factors that can affect the determination of agreement in language production. It reports nine experiments that used a task in which participants produced sentence completions for visually presented complex subjects such as âThe greyhound which two lively rabbits were temptingâ. Such completions typically agree with the head noun (greyhound) as in âA greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting is jumpingâ but sometimes agree with the local noun (rabbits) as in âA greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting are jumpingâ. The first experiments examined the value of the concept of markedness in subject verb number agreement to see whether it has explanatory power for languages like Slovene with more than two number values. Results from two experiments employing complex sentence preambles including a head noun post modified by a prepositional phrase or a relative clause (e.g., âThe nudist(s) near the sand dune(s)â) show that Slovene number agreement differs from number agreement in languages with no dual, but that it is not possible to simply state that the singular is the least marked and the dual the most.
Harrison, Annabel Jane
agreement errors ; Slovene ; language production ; subject-verb agreement ; psycholinguistics ; coordination ; gender ; number
Production of subject-verb agreement in Slovene and English. This thesis explores the mental representation of subject-verb agreement, and the factors that can affect the determination of agreement in language production. It reports nine experiments that used a task in which participants produced sentence completions for visually presented complex subjects such as âThe greyhound which two lively rabbits were temptingâ. Such completions typically agree with the head noun (greyhound) as in âA greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting is jumpingâ but sometimes agree with the local noun (rabbits) as in âA greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting are jumpingâ. The first experiments examined the value of the concept of markedness in subject verb number agreement to see whether it has explanatory power for languages like Slovene with more than two number values. Results from two experiments employing complex sentence preambles including a head noun post modified by a prepositional phrase or a relative clause (e.g., âThe nudist(s) near the sand dune(s)â) show that Slovene number agreement differs from number agreement in languages with no dual, but that it is not possible to simply state that the singular is the least marked and the dual the most.
production subject_verb agreement english explores mental_representation subject_verb agreement factor_affect determination agreement language_production report use task participant produce sentence completion visually present complex subject lively rabbit tempt completion typically agree head_noun lively rabbit tempt sometimes agree local noun rabbit lively rabbit tempt first_examine value concept markedness subject_verb number agreement see_whether explanatory_power language like number value employ complex sentence include head_noun post modify prepositional phrase relative_clause near sand dune show number agreement differs number agreement languages dual possible simply state singular least mark dual