Jelena Mirković and Maryellen C. MacDonald Language and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison Introduction How to Study Subject-Verb Agreement Production? Theories I: Grammatical Features Agreement is a systematic covariation of the properties of linguistic elements which indicates a relationship between them. e.g. (1) The bird-SG. sings-SG. (2) The birds-PL. sing-PL. Please see handout for references. Thanks to: Laboratory for Experimental Psychology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia & Montenegro This work is supported by NIH Grant P50 MH and the Vilas Trust, UW-Madison. The result of processing is determined by the interaction of multiple graded, probabilistic constraints (MacDonald et al., 1994; Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994; Haskell & MacDonald, in press; Thornton & MacDonald, in press) Theories II: Agreement Production as a Constraint Satisfaction Process Experiment 1: Two Forms Grammatical Quantifiers in Serbian Conclusions Experiment 2: One Form Grammatical Genitive plural form of feminine nouns is homophonous with nominative singular form. Nominative form is the agreement controller in subject- verb agreement. If case homophony and distributional information influence agreement production, then the proportion of singular verbs with feminine nouns should be higher than with masculine nouns. -40 Ss, native speakers of Serbian -fragment completion task, with preambles with feminine or masculine nouns (e.g. five cows) Normal, error-free agreement production is influenced by distributional morpho-phonological factors: homophony with nominative singular form in feminine nouns promotes the use of singular verbs. In masculine nouns, the archaic dual form is homophonous with genitive singular form. Even though genitive form is not the agreement controller in subject-verb agreement, it serves that function in adjective- noun number agreement. If case homophony and distributional information influence agreement production then the number of singular verb forms (agreement errors) in masculine nouns should be higher than in feminine nouns. Subject-verb agreement production can be influenced by morpho- phonological distributional information, when both one and more than one grammatical alternatives exist. Together with other results showing semantic (Thornton & MacDonald, in press; Vigliocco et al., 1996) and phonological (Haskell & MacDonald, in press; Hartsuiker et al, submitted) effects, our studies show that agreement production is well described in terms of a constraint satisfaction process. Across different languages, it includes properties such as: number:(3) The little girl-SG. is-SG. beautiful. gender:(4) La-FEM. niña-FEM. pequeña-FEM. es linda-FEM. person:(5) She-3 rd.P.SG. sings-3 rd.P.SG. case: (6) Gledam malu-ACC. devojčicu-ACC. I’m watching the little girl. Hierarchical Feature Passing (Vigliocco & Nicol, 1998) Number Marking and Number Morphing (Bock et al., 2001) Message Formulation Grammatical Encoding Phonological Encoding = Number markingNumber morphing Fragment completion task: The subject is presented with a sentence preamble like the key to the cabinets and is supposed to repeat it and complete the sentence, e.g. the key to the cabinets is on the shelf Sometimes the subjects produce attraction errors: singularplural morphology syntax semantics pragmatics singularplural morphology syntax semanticspragmatics Competition produces variability in responses! 5, 6,... krava-GEN.PL=NOM.SG 5, 6,... cows trče-PL/trči-SG run/runs 5, 6,... konja-GEN.PL. 5, 6,... horses Abstract A central debate in language production research is the extent to which the computation of noun-verb agreement is an autonomous syntactic process or whether it is constrained by non-syntactic factors (e.g. Bock et al. 2001; Thornton & MacDonald, in press). The primary data for these alternatives have been the rates of agreement errors in fragment completion task (a speaker completes a complex noun phrase like "the key to the cabinets" with a verb that agrees with the local noun "cabinets" rather than the head noun "key"). Evidence for non-syntactic influences on agreement is mixed in these studies. Recently several researchers have identified constructions in which several grammatical options are available (Haskell & MacDonald, submitted; Hemforth & Konieczny, 2002). These constructions are potentially quite informative, because subtle non-syntactic effects may be more evident here than in cases where only one agreement pattern is grammatical. We investigate another case of this sort, subject-verb number agreement with certain quantifier phrases in Serbian such as "five cows", for which both singular and plural verbs are grammatical. Results: significantly more singular verb responses in preambles with feminine nouns miscellaneous responses are equally distributed across genders (i.e. the effect is not coming from comprehension difficulties) 2, 3, 4 krave-NOM.PL. 2, 3, 4 cows 2, 3, 4 konja-DUAL 2, 3, 4 horses -40 Ss, native speakers of Serbian -same methodology as for Exp. 1 (fragment completion task: three cows) Results: significantly more singular verb responses in preambles with masculine nouns more plural verb responses in preambles with feminine nouns (p=0.088) equal distribution of miscellaneous responses in two genders The Role of Morpho-Phonological Factors in Agreement Production: When Singular and Plural are Both Grammatical The focus of this study is subject-verb number agreement production (for example, (1)). the key to the cabinets- PL. are- PL. on the shelf head nounlocal noun  the subjects erroneously produce the verb that agrees in number with the local noun, instead of the head noun NP PP P NP1 NDet thekeyto NP2 NDet thecabinets VP S are In the case of attraction errors, the blocking mechanism failed. Error-free Subject-Verb Agreement Most of the studies of subject-verb agreement production were focused on errors! Recently, however, several constructions where more than one option is grammatically correct have been studied (Haskell & MacDonald, 2002; Hemforth & Konieczny, 2002):  subtle non-syntactic effects may be more evident here than in constructions where only one agreement pattern is grammatical. In Serbian (and possibly other Slavic languages) there is a construction where both singular and plural verb forms are allowed: Quantifier + NP: 5 krava-GEN.PL. trče-PL./trči-SG. 5 cowsrun/runs Experiment 1 investigates the role of morphophonological factors in agreement production in this case. Both singular and plural verbs are grammatical! krava-GEN.PL.=NOM.SG. Quantifier + Noun: noun case depends on the quantifier 1 krava-NOM.SG. 1 cow 1 konj-NOM.SG. 1 horse trči-SG. runs 2, 3, 4 krave-NOM.PL. 2, 3, 4 cows 2, 3, 4 konja-DUAL 2, 3, 4 horses trče-PL. run feminine:masculine: 5, 6,... krava-GEN.PL. 5, 6,... cows 5, 6,... konja-GEN.PL. 5, 6,... horses Verb: trče-PL./trči-SG. run/runs konja-DUAL.=GEN.SG. trče-PL. run Only plural form is grammatical! Agreement production is influenced by distributional morpho- phonological factors, which is in this case indicated by the increase of agreement errors in masculine nouns.