Nicol Janet L, Barss Andrew, Barker Jason E
Department of Linguistics, Program in Cognitive Science, University of ArizonaTucson, AZ, USA; Department of Psychology, Program in Cognitive Science, University of ArizonaTucson, AZ, USA.
Department of Psychology, Program in Cognitive Science, University of Arizona Tucson, AZ, USA.
Front Psychol. 2016 May 2;7:548. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00548. eCollection 2016.
We explore the language production process by eliciting subject-verb agreement errors. Participants were asked to create complete sentences from sentence beginnings such as The elf's/elves' house with the tiny window/windows and The statue in the elf's/elves' gardens. These are subject noun phrases containing a head noun and controller of agreement (statue) and two nonheads, a "local noun" (window(s)/garden(s)), and a possessor noun (elf's/elves'). Past research has shown that a plural nonhead noun (an "attractor") within a subject noun phrase triggers the production of verb agreement errors, and further, that the nearer the attractor to the head noun, the greater the interference. This effect can be interpreted in terms of relative hierarchical distance from the head noun, or via a processing window account, which claims that during production, there is a window in which the head and modifying material may be co-active, and an attractor must be active at the same time as the head to give rise to errors. Using possessors attached at different heights within the same window, we are able to empirically distinguish these accounts. Possessors also allow us to explore two additional issues. First, case marking of local nouns has been shown to reduce agreement errors in languages with "rich" inflectional systems, and we explore whether English speakers attend to case. Secondly, formal syntactic analyses differ regarding the structural position of the possessive marker, and we distinguish them empirically with the relative magnitude of errors produced by possessors and local nouns. Our results show that, across the board, plural possessors are significantly less disruptive to the agreement process than plural local nouns. Proximity to the head noun matters: a possessor directly modifying the head noun induce a significant number of errors, but a possessor within a modifying prepositional phrase did not, though the local noun did. These findings suggest that proximity to a head noun is independent of a "processing window" effect. They also support a noun phrase-internal, case-like analysis of the structural position of the possessive ending and show that even speakers of inflectionally impoverished languages like English are sensitive to morphophonological case-like marking.
我们通过引发主谓一致错误来探究语言生成过程。参与者被要求根据诸如“小精灵的/小精灵们的有着小窗户的房子”以及“小精灵的/小精灵们的花园里的雕像”这样的句子开头来造出完整的句子。这些是主语名词短语，包含一个中心名词和一致的控制者（雕像）以及两个非中心名词，一个“局部名词”（窗户/窗户们、花园/花园们）和一个所有格名词（小精灵的/小精灵们的）。过去的研究表明，主语名词短语中的复数非中心名词（一个“吸引项”）会引发动词一致错误的产生，而且进一步来说，吸引项离中心名词越近，干扰就越大。这种效应可以根据与中心名词的相对层级距离来解释，或者通过一个加工窗口理论来解释，该理论声称在语言生成过程中，存在一个窗口，在这个窗口内中心名词和修饰成分可能同时活跃，并且一个吸引项必须与中心名词同时活跃才能产生错误。通过使用在同一窗口内不同高度附着的所有格，我们能够从实证上区分这些理论。所有格还使我们能够探究另外两个问题。首先，在具有“丰富”屈折系统的语言中，局部名词的格标记已被证明可以减少一致错误，我们探究说英语的人是否会注意到格。其次，关于所有格标记的结构位置，形式句法分析存在差异，我们通过所有格和局部名词产生的错误的相对大小从实证上区分它们。我们的结果表明，总体而言，复数所有格对一致过程的干扰明显小于复数局部名词。与中心名词的接近程度很重要：直接修饰中心名词的所有格会引发大量错误，但修饰性介词短语中的所有格则不会，不过局部名词会。这些发现表明，与中心名词的接近程度独立于“加工窗口”效应。它们还支持对所有格词尾的结构位置进行名词短语内部的、类似格的分析，并表明即使像英语这样屈折变化较少的语言的使用者也对形态音位学上类似格的标记敏感。
