Department of Psychology, University of Milano - Bicocca, Italy.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States of America.
Cognition. 2020 May;198:104161. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104161. Epub 2020 Jan 27.
In English, when two nouns in a disjunctive subject differ in number (e.g., the dogs or the cat), the verb tends to agree with the number of the nearer noun. This is exceptional, as a noun's linear proximity to the verb does not generally play a role in agreement. In the present study, we investigate a further puzzle about agreement with disjunction, namely, the existence of a pattern in which two singular disjuncts trigger plural agreement (e.g., The lawyer or the accountant are…). Two eyetracking studies in English show that plural agreement with a disjunction of singulars does not reliably disrupt readers' eye movements, in contrast to the immediate disruptive effect of other agreement violations. Three off-line rating studies in English show that plural agreement results in only a small decrement in acceptability, compared to other agreement violations, and that in some structural configurations there is no decrement at all. On the whole, the data do not support the hypothesis that plural agreement is licensed only when or has an inclusive reading; even when it has an exclusive reading, there is only a small penalty for plural agreement. Finally, we explored this issue in Italian, which has a richer system of inflectional morphology. Italian speakers showed a plural preference in a completion experiment, and singular and plural agreement did not differ in acceptability in a rating experiment. We conclude that agreement with disjunction is a grammatical lacuna or gap, in the sense that speakers' grammar simply does not prescribe a verb number following a disjunctive subject.
在英语中，当一个主语中的两个名词在数上不同（例如，dogs 或 cat）时，动词往往与较近的名词的数一致。这是例外情况，因为名词与动词的线性接近程度通常在一致性中不起作用。在本研究中，我们研究了关于与析取一致的另一个难题，即存在一种模式，其中两个单数析取项触发复数一致（例如，律师或会计师是……）。两项英语眼动追踪研究表明，与单数析取的复数一致不会可靠地破坏读者的眼球运动，与其他一致性违规的即时干扰作用形成对比。三项英语离线评分研究表明，与其他一致性违规相比，复数一致只会导致可接受性略有下降，并且在某些结构配置中根本没有下降。总的来说，数据不支持这样的假设，即复数一致仅在或具有包容性阅读时才被许可；即使具有排他性阅读，复数一致也只有很小的惩罚。最后，我们在意大利语中探讨了这个问题，意大利语具有更丰富的屈折形态系统。在完成实验中，意大利语使用者表现出复数偏好，在评分实验中，单数和复数一致在可接受性上没有差异。我们的结论是，与析取的一致是语法上的空白或缺口，即说话者的语法根本没有规定在一个析取主语之后使用动词的数。
