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Juan Carlos Acuña Fariña
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German: three gender classes (masculine, feminine and
neuter) and a complex set of interacting morphological,
phonological, and semantic principles (Köpcke and Zubin
1983, 1984).
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-“a clear case of the victory of the
indexical aspect of language over its
iconic aspect”. Agreement “is not
only non-iconic but meaningless”.
(Haiman 1985: 162).
- Jespersen (1922: 352 ff.):
“superfluous” and “cumbersome”,
-Taylor (2002: 332 ff.):
“dysfunctional”.
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Mallison & Blake (1981):
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(1) [We will keep] the little white
candlesticks and the comfortable red
chairs.
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WHY BOTHER?
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1.2. Agreement in the grammar
and in the mind
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Chomsky´s (1998, 1999, 2001) notions of
feature interpretability, legibility of the core,
Phase, Phase Impenetrability and Locality.
Chomsky (2001: 13) insists that probe-goal
relations must be local “in order to minimise
search”. In order to reduce the “computational
burden” (1999: 9), he proposes that the
derivation of expressions proceeds by phase,
and that “phases must be as small as
possible, to minimise memory” (2001: 14).
The Phase Impenetrability Condition.
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This serial thinking, and the obvious
derivational cyclicity on which it rests, is
precisely the kind of theoretical claim that can be
addressed in a laboratory. All one needs to do is
to seek to falsify it by showing evidence of
semantic penetration inside putative phase
domains.
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Feature mismatch (Corbett 2006: 143 ff.): the
committee have postposed any decision //
*these committee are satisfied. This calls for a
view of semantic agreement, which is no more
than a way of sanctioning mismatch (some
believe that agreement is always semantic:
Barlow 1999, Pollard and Sag 1988).
In general, mismatches echo the penetrability
or impenetrability of hypothesized
components in the grammar and the
processing of agreement. This will be an
important issue here.
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1.3. Domains and kinds: distance
and penetrability
The Agreement Hierarchy (Corbett 1979)
Attributive > predicate > relative pronoun > personal pronoun
BUT:
Frequent intervention of formal processes across
large distances and of notional factors in the short
distances:
(5) A lot of people were there (*is there)
(6) The police haven´t yet made up their
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mind/minds
III. Formal and conceptual sources of
agreement features
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A few relevant questions
Is agreement an essentially Do we compute agreement
formal (Bock & Eberhard 1993; differently for gender and
Eberhard 1997; Levelt, Roeloffs, number? For semantic
& Meyer 1999; Chomsky 1995, gender and morphosyntactic
1999, 2001; Carminatti 2005; gender?
Franck et al. 2005) or an Is the processing of agreement
essentially conceptual the same across domains?
phenomenon (Viglioco et al.
1996; Thornton & MacDonald
2003; Haskell & MacDonald
2003; Barlow 1999; Pollard &
Sag 1988)?
Are the grammar of agreement
and the processing of
agreement ‘in good agreement’
with each other?
Are there cross-linguistic
differences in the way
agreement is processed?
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3.2. Sources of information for
agreement
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Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 504 ff.):
(10) Twenty dollars seems a ridiculous amount to pay
to go to the movies.
(11) Three eggs is plenty.
(12) One percent of students of students take/*takes
drugs.
(13) He withdrew his motion for what were obviously
very sound reasons.
(14) What is needed are managers with new ideas and
the will to apply them.
(15) What are going to be the deciding factors?
(16) Eggs and bacon is/*are my favourite breakfast
(17) The hammer and sickle was/*were flying over the
Kremlin
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In processing:
So-called conceptual anaphors
Gernsbacher (1991) used three types of
antecedents:
-A basketball team.
-A book.
-A plate
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3.3. The Feature Hierarchy
Hypothesis
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3.3.1. The grammar of features
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Cognitive Grammar: all agreement is
symbolic and predicational. Period.
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HOWEVER:
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A contentious claim.
Psycholinguistic findings:
(21) a. The ballerina told the skier that the doctor would blame him
for the injury.
b. The ballerina told the skier that the doctor would blame her for the
injury.
(22) a. The landlord told the janitors that the fireman with the gas-
mask would protect him from getting hurt.
b. The landlord told the janitors that the fireman with the gas-mask
would protect them from getting hurt.
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RESULTS: number processed
faster.
BUT: -priming.
-1000 ms. Too slow.
-Lukatella et al. (1987) found the
very opposite.
CONCLUSION:
Very weak evidence for the FHH (contra
Carminati 2005).
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ERP (Event Related Potentials):
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3µ V
Agreement – Number ; 340 ms Agreement – Number ; 600 ms Agreement – Number ; 740ms 2.25
1.5
0.75
-
0.75
-1.5
2.25
Agreement – Gender ; 340 ms Agreement – Gender ; 600 ms Agreement – Gender ; 740ms
-
3µ V
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Münte & Heinze (1994), German, English and Finnish: article + noun
and S-V agreement: LANs that seem to reflect automatic (syntactic)
processes (Neville et al. 1991; Osterhout & Holcomb 1992; Osterhout
et al. 1994; Hagoort et al. 1993; Friederici et al. 1996).
RESULTS:
SO:
Early syntactic feature checking is the same for
both gender and number, and,
At least for English S-V agreement, agreement is a
fast, shallow, automatic process.
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Barber & Carreiras (2005) using Spanish
materials:
(26) (27)
Agreement Agreement
ARROYO HELADO EL LAGO
Double violation
ARROYO HELADAS
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RESULTS:
INTERPRETATION:
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CONCLUSION:
Computing vs storing.
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IV. Cross-linguistic differences in
agreement: attrition vs redundancy
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Berg (1998)
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SO:
semanticity in English
vs
syntacticity in German
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BUT:
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English goes syntactic now
????????
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Production and spill over
effects: on domain
penetrability
Strength of home domains
Frequency and muscles
Two interesting consequences
of English attrition:
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1. It makes formal linkage more susceptible
to semantic interference; and
2. It freezes an SVO order that guarantees
that the who-did-what-to-whom message-
level mapping to phrasal packages is not
compromised despite the loss of
morphological marks.
Left orientation
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“When there is a conflict between the
preverbal and the postverbal material, the
syntactic principle usually wins out. When
the conflict arises within the preverbal
domain, the semantic principle is
preponderant. This is because the syntax
directs the speaker´s attention only to the
preverbal NP as such, not to its internal
structure”. (Berg 1998: 63).
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3 consequences should follow:
In comprehension, as opposed to production, syntactic
penetration of form into meaning should occur in
languages, like German, Spanish or Italian, with a
rich inflectional system.
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Shallow processing indicating automaticity
of initial bonding stage.
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Second prediction:
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ENGLISH SPANISH
N % N %
sg.: pl. sg.: pl. sg.: pl. sg.: pl.
Category 1
a. Committee 10 11 38.4 – 42.3 32 2 94.1 – 5.8
b. Enemy 19 6 73 - 23 34 0 100 - 0
c. Crew 11 5 42.3 – 19.2 34 0 100 – 0
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So: English is more
susceptible to semantic
penetration than
Spanish, and more left-
oriented.
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4.3. The processing of English pronouns
(i.e. the right edge of the AH)
????????
HYPOTHESES
1. Absence of the bonding phase in English.
2. More geometry used.
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Van Gompell & Liversedge (2003):
backwards anaphora
(29)
a. gender match
When he was at the party, the boy cruelly
teased the girl during the party games.
b. gender mismatch
When he was at the party, the girl cruelly
teased the boy during the party games.
c. control
When I was at the party, the boy cruelly teased
the girl during the party games.
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The Gender Mismatch Effect
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Unanchored
pronoun XXXXXXXXXXXXXX Predicted co-indexation site
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Buttress the view defended here
that:
2. Geometrically-based co-indexing is
strong at least in English.
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SUM-1:
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SUM-1:
Storing vs computing.
Bradley & Foster´s (1987) three-stage
model of lexical retrieval.
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SUM-1:
At the grammatical level, even the S-V
domain (not as far to the right as
pronouns) may exhibit semantic
interference. However, at the processing
level, S-V ties are processed
automatically, that is, as a syntactic
process, even in English (phase
impenetrability of a core clause
construction process?).
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SUM-1:
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SUM-1:
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SUM-1:
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SUM-1:
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SUM-2:
Left-oriented SVO clause-building rails in the
processing of cataphora (Cowart & Cairns 1987;
Van Gompel & Liversedge 2003; Kazzanina et
al. 2006).
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SUM-3:
The function of agreement
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SUM-3:
Gender is generative
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SUM-3:
So gender may be instantiated lexically,
but for syntactic reasons.
Formal autonomy.
Formal co-variance is a crude and finite
means of expressing infinite predications.
Lacking gender, such a crucial clause
construction role must be attributed to a
fixed word order and to the orientational
reflexes that this affords.
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SUM:
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The to-do list:
Geometry in Spanish
Attraction
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THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR
YOUR PATIENCE
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