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ERIC Number: EJ806574
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008-Sep
Pages: 31
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0169-0965
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Agreement and Attraction in Russian
Lorimor, Heidi; Bock, Kathryn; Zalkind, Ekaterina; Sheyman, Alina; Beard, Robert
Language and Cognitive Processes, v23 n6 p769-799 Sep 2008
We assessed whether and under what conditions noncanonical agreement patterns occur in Russian, with the goal of understanding the factors involved in normal agreement. Russian is a morphosyntactically rich language in which agreement involves features for number, gender, and case. If consistent, overt specification of number and gender agreement features supports agreement processes in language production, agreement should be less vulnerable to number and gender attraction than in languages with sparse agreement morphology. A related question was the degree to which notional number influences agreement patterns in morphologically rich languages. We varied the grammatical and notional number properties of sentence subjects and examined the effects on the predicate in sentence completion tasks using native Russian speakers. Noncanonical agreement occurred, but at rates lower than those observed in English and other languages without rich number morphology. Noncanonically plural predicates occurred more often after notionally plural subjects, suggesting notional number agreement, but the incidence was also lower than in languages with sparser agreement morphology. Gender attraction was almost nonexistent. The results suggest that morphology arbitrates grammatical agreement processes and reduces the impact of variations in notional number. (Contains 6 tables and 3 figures.)
Psychology Press. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A