The Interaction of Syntax and Semantics in the Production of English Verb Agreement

220 Pages·2017·2.81 MB·English

University of Colorado, Boulder
CU Scholar
Institute of Cognitive Science Graduate Theses &
Institute of Cognitive Science
Dissertations
Spring 1-1-2013
Beyond the Subject: The Interaction of Syntax and
Semantics in the Production of English Verb
Agreement
Cecily Jill Duffield
University of Colorado Boulder, [email protected]
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BEYOND THE SUBJECT:
THE INTERACTION OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS IN
THE PRODUCTION OF ENGLISH VERB AGREEMENT
by
CECILY JILL DUFFIELD
B.A., University of Puget Sound, l997
M.A., University of Colorado, 2009

A thesis submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Colorado in partial fulfillment
of the requirement for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Linguistics
Institute of Cognitive Science
2013
This thesis entitled:
Beyond the Subject: The Interaction of Syntax and Semantics in the Production of
English Verb Agreement
written by Cecily Jill Duffield
has been approved for the Department of Linguistics
and the Institute of Cognitive Science

________________________________________
Dr. Bhuvana Narasimhan

________________________________________
Dr. Albert Kim

Date_______________

The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories,
and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation
standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned disciplines.

IRB protocol # 11-0603
Duffield, Cecily Jill (Joint Ph.D., Linguistics and Cognitive Science)
Beyond the Subject: The Interaction of Syntax and Semantics in
the Production of English Verb Agreement
Thesis directed by Professors Bhuvana Narasimhan and Albert Kim

Abstract
A key debate in the psycholinguistic study of grammatical language production is whether the
process is a syntactocentric one, driven by grammatical information and grammatical rules, or a
dynamic, interactive one, involving both semantic and syntactic information. Examining how
speakers produce subject-verb number agreement has been useful in addressing this debate. Verb
agreement is widely considered to be primarily a syntactic process in which grammatical number
features of the subject are copied onto the verb. Variation in verb agreement patterns can, however,
reflect the construal of the subject number. Such variation suggests that speakers are sensitive to
both syntactic and semantic information about the subject during the production of agreement.
However, psycholinguistic accounts of how speakers integrate these two types of information
cannot yet account for the full range of variation seen in agreement in spontaneous, natural speech.
This dissertation concerns a subject-verb number agreement pattern that cannot be explained
either in terms of grammatical form or semantic construal of the subject, exemplified by the
utterance [One thing I thought about the other day]-SG were-PL batteries. The research presented here
examines how verb agreement is affected by grammatical and semantic features outside of the
subject noun phrase: the number of the post-verbal nominal, the concreteness of the post-verbal
noun relative to the subject, and the semantics of the construction used when agreement is
produced. I used a corpus study and three elicited production experiments to investigate how these
features correlated with speakers’ likelihood of producing verb agreement that did not match the
grammatical number of the subject.
iii
Results demonstrate that speakers are sensitive to both grammatical and semantic information
outside of the subject when producing verb number agreement. Specifically, the grammatical
number of the post-verbal nominal affects speakers’ production of verb agreement. Furthermore,
the effects of post-verbal number are modulated by constructional semantics. These findings cannot
be accounted for by syntactocentric models of language production, in which grammatical forms are
processed in isolation from semantic information. Rather, they suggest that grammatical language
production is an interactive process in which semantic information can modulate the effects of
activated syntactic features.

iv
To Scot and Aaron,
who are my breath, my life, my all, my everything.

v
Acknowledgements
This has not been a solitary journey. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my advisors and my
committee, whose enthusiastic support has made this work possible and who have allowed me to
independently explore the questions that I have been most passionate about, even when my research
interests did not exactly align with theirs. My first expression of gratitude goes to my co-advisors,
Bhuvana Narasimhan and Albert Kim. I will ever be thankful for Bhuvana’s keen insight, probing
questions, graceful but challenging critique, and gentle insistence on perfection; this dissertation and
my scholarship are immeasurably better for her guidance. I doubt I will ever be sure how I managed
to convince Al to join this project, for there are certainly other linguists cleverer and more deserving
of his time, mentorship, and collaboration. I have greatly enjoyed our candid and honest discussions,
in which I was hard-pressed to defend my ideas, and in which I was happy to discover that, for the
most part, I could. My appreciation also goes to my other committee members. Alice Healy took the
time to discuss experimental design and research methods with me, and her attention to detail
helped to clarify the design of this thesis. It is one thing to ponder interesting questions, and quite
another to know how to go about answering them, and Alice was instrumental in helping me with
the answering part. Laura Michaelis-Cummings spent endless hours with me, engaged in enthusiastic
discussion; I am grateful for the sheer joy of doing linguistics that she has imparted to me. Many of
my fondest memories of the graduate school experience are of our discussions both in person and
through long emails. Finally, I can never give enough thanks to Lise Menn, whose conversation with
me years ago in Taipei convinced me that pursuing a graduate degree in Linguistics was my path,
and who has since become a mentor and dear friend. Entering her house will always feel like coming
home.
vi
My graduate colleagues and faculty have contributed greatly to the development of this
thesis. I am particularly grateful to the members of SCULL (the “Secret Colorado Underground
Linguistics Lab”), a small group that weekly over several semesters to discuss our research: Susan
Windisch Brown, Steve Duman, David Harper, Alison Hilger, Les Sikos and Michael Thomas. Their
insightful coaching and critique provided some of the best instruction that I received during my
years of graduate school. I would also like to thank Meghan Damour for suggestions on improving
the stimuli used in the experiments, and my dear friend Karen Wolfer for endless support and
encouragement and offers to proofread. Of the faculty, Martha Palmer has my appreciation for
several years of support. Gary McCllelland deserves a very sincere thank-you for abundant assistance
in statistical analyses. I would also like to thank the Department of Linguistics, the Institute of
Cognitive Science, and the Graduate School at the University of Colorado for financial support.
There are, of course, many others deserving of my gratitude for their support during my graduate
career, and I ask for their forgiveness for having neglected to mention them here.
Most importantly, I would like to thank my family: my father, John Penney, who provided
me with a strong work ethic and sense of professionalism; my mother, Stephanie Penney, who was
the first person to teach me how to think, and who is living proof that a curious intellect, open mind,
and unending desire to learn do not require any letters behind one’s name; my sister, Heather
Penney, whose accomplishments are a constant source of inspiration; my son, Aaron, who is
thankfully too young to hold the memory of how many hours I spent writing instead of playing, and
whom I hope to make as proud as he has made me; and last-but-most-of-all, my husband, Scot.
There is no end to my gratitude to him for being my loyal and faithful companion as I have sallied
forth on this crazy adventure; governance over a thousand islands would compensate a mere
fraction of all he has done for me. Without him, this simply would not have been possible.

vii
Contents

Abstract
  iii

Acknowledgements
  vi

Contents
  viii

List
 of
 Tables
  xii

List
 of
 Figures
  xiv

Chapter
 1.
 Introduction
  1

1.1
 The
 production
 of
 agreement:
 Syntax
 and
 semantics
  2

1.2
 Beyond
 the
 subject:
 Expanding
 the
 scope
 of
 research
 with
 new
 data
  17

1.3.
 Purpose
 and
 scope
 of
 the
 dissertation
  20

Chapter
 2.
 Background
 on
 Language
 Production
 and
 Agreement
  23

2.1
 Overview
 of
 language
 production
 models
 and
 grammatical
 encoding
 processes
  23

2.2.
 Overview
 of
 psycholinguistic
 accounts
 of
 agreement
 production
  32

2.2.1
 Syntactocentric
 approaches
 to
 agreement
 production
  35

2.2.2
 Interactive
 approaches
 to
 agreement
 production
  46

2.3
 Summary
 of
 current
 research
 and
 contributions
 of
 the
 thesis
  53

Chapter
 3:

 A
 Corpus
 Study
 of
 Agreement
 Mismatch
  57

3.1
 Agreement
 mismatch:
 speech
 errors
 or
 linguistic
 patterns?
  58

3.2
 Methods
  62

3.3.1
 Data
 collection
  62

3.3.3
 Scoring
  63

3.3.3
 Analysis
  66

viii
3.5
 Discussion
  68

Chapter
 4:
 Experiment
 1—The
 Role
 of
 Post-­‐verbal
 Nominal
 and
 Construction
  72

4.1
 Can
 post-­‐verbal
 nominals
 interfere
 in
 the
 production
 of
 subject-­‐verb
 agreement?
  73

4.2
 Can
 interference
 effects
 from
 post-­‐verbal
 nominals
 be
 mediated
 by
 constructions?
  81

4.3
 Experiment
 1:
 New
 elements
 in
 design
 and
 paradigm
  85

4.3.1
 Eliciting
 constructions
 using
 primed
 responses
  88

4.3.2
 Controlling
 conceptual
 input
 with
 picture
 stimuli
  89

4.3.3
 Placing
 participants
 in
 a
 communicative
 situation
  90

4.4
 Methods
  92

4.4.1
 Participants
  92

4.4.2
 Materials
  92

4.4.3
 Procedure
  98

4.4.4
 Scoring
  99

4.4.5
 Analysis
  103

4.6
 Results
  103

4.6
 Discussion
  105

Chapter
 5:
 Experiment
 2—The
 Role
 of
 Subject
 Type
  116

5.1
 Is
 agreement
 mismatch
 more
 likely
 to
 occur
 with
 abstract
 subject
 head
 nouns
 than
 with

concrete
 subject
 head
 nouns?
  118

5.1.1
 Previous
 research
 of
 conceptual
 properties
 of
 subjects
  119

5.1.2
 Predictions
 framed
 within
 the
 syntactocentric
 and
 interactive
 approaches
  125

5.2
 Experiment
 2:
 Overview
  127

5.3
 Methods
  128

5.3.1
 Participants
  128

5.3.2
 Materials
  128

ix