Transcript Making Syntax of Sense: Russian

A few sample research designs
Heidi Lorimor
Ling 225
‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day”, 2007
A good research project must be:
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Concise
Testable
Controlled
Grounded in research, testing a prediction
made by other studies
An “alternative” hypothesis – expect to see a
difference between two groups
Approved by the IRB!
3 Research Studies
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Russian Agreement Attraction
English Conjunct Agreement & Duration
Analysis
Arabic-English Heritage Speakers
Russian Agreement
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“The format for the editing commands are:
[address1[,address2]][function][arguments] where the
addresses are optional and can be separated from the
function by spaces or tabs.” Introduction to Unix textbook.
Fiamingo et al., (1998)
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“…the scheduling of these holidays are subject to
departmental approval.” University of Illinois Calendar, 2004
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“Minority ownership of businesses are up.” George W. Bush
in 3rd presidential debate, 10/13/04
Russian Agreement
Subject-Verb Agreement
Normal: Subject HEAD noun agrees in number
with the verb
The professor with the excellent students studies in the library
Attraction: Plural marker from LOCAL noun
(interloper) agrees in number with the verb
The professor with the excellent students study in the library
Russian Agreement
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Does morphological case play a role in how
often attraction occurs?
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Agreement and structural Case are “two sides of the
same coin” (Boeckx, 2004; see also Chomsky,
1999:35)
Morphological case reduces the rate of attraction in
Dutch and German for non-homophonous case
endings (Hartsuiker, Schriefers, Bock, and Kikstra,
2004)
Expect to see reduction in attraction when overt
morphology signals a distinction between subjects and
non-subjects
Russian Agreement
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128 participants
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All native Russian speakers
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Recent immigrants taking English classes at a
community center in Chicago or
Affiliated with the University of Illinois
2 Procedures
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Sentence Completion Task, n=96 (Bock & Miller, 1991)
Modified Sentence Completion Task, n=32 (Vigliocco
et al.’s (1995) Design, Exp. 2)
Russian Agreement
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Procedure:
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Hear preamble
Repeat preamble and complete sentence
Experimenter advances tape to next trial
Example Trial
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Hear: “The picture in the magazines”
Respond: “The picture in the magazines is
pretty”
Modified Completion Task
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Same procedure as sentence completion
task, except…
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Provided unmarked verb or adjective
Then played preamble
Participants repeated preamble and completed
the sentence, using the word provided
Materials
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32 experimental items & 64 fillers
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4 versions of each experimental item
 SS
билет на концерт
‘ticket to the concert’
 SP
билет на концерты
‘ticket to the concerts’
 PS
билеты на концерт
‘tickets to the concert’
 PP
билеты на концерты ‘tickets to the concerts’
Same fillers for each list.
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Items balanced for gender in each group:
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MM
MF
FM
FF
8 masculine head – masculine local
8 masculine head – feminine local
8 feminine head – masculine local
8 feminine head – feminine local
Crossed Number x Gender: 2 of each possible combination
Russian Agreement
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Coded for:
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Singular Verb/Adjective
Plural Verb/Adjective
Unmarked for number
Miscellaneous response
Russian Agreement
4091 Scorable responses (72% marked as Singular or Plural)
Proportion
Plural
Responses
SS (ticket to the concert)
.03%
SP (ticket to the concerts)
5.5%*
PS (tickets to the concert)
97.7%
PP (tickets to the concerts)
98.6%
* = significant at p < .05
Russian Agreement
Effect of Nominative-Case-homophonous local nouns on
verb agreement in the singular-plural condition
Percentage plural
responses
20.0%
“defekt v mashinakh”
“bilet na konserty”
defect in cars
ticket to concerts
15.0%
9.5%
10.0%
5.0%
4.1%
0.0%
Non-homophonous
Local noun type
Homophonous
Russian Agreement
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Agreement attraction seems to occur less often in
case-marking languages: (Bock, Carreiras, Meseguer, & Octigan,
2004; Hartsuiker, Schriefers, Bock, & Kikstra, 2003, Exp. 1; Vigliocco,
Butterworth & Garrett, 1996)
% SP attraction
Possible Explanations:
• Feedback account:
Russian
5.5%
German
3.1%
homophonous plural marker
increases plural agreement (Dell,
1986; Stemberger, 1985)
Spanish
11.5%
• Monitoring account:
11.0%
potential attractors are eliminated
via cues of morphological case
(Levelt, 1983, 1989)
English
Russian Agreement
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Are agreement patterns influenced by notional
number?
 In English and Spanish, notional plurality
increases rate of plural agreement about 10%
(Bock et al., 2004)
 If notional agreement effects are instances of
semantics overriding grammatical agreement
processes, expect increased plural agreement
with notionally plural subjects even when
morphological cues reduce the rate of
attraction
Russian Agreement
Distributivity Effects on Notional Number
Is this one thing or many things?
A few preambles – translated:
Non-Distributive---------------------------------Distributive
Russian Agreement
Percentage plural responses
Effect of distributivity on verb agreement
20.0%
15.0%
10.0%
singular-plural
singular-singular
9.7%
5.0%
*
3.1%
0.0%
0.4%
0.5%
non-distributive
distributive
Distributivity of subject noun phrase
Total SP plurals: 8(non-dist) and 31(distributive)
Russian Agreement
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Attraction does occur in Russian
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Significant effect of plural attraction
Overt case-marking reduces the rate of attraction
However…
 Notional agreement still occurs, and plural
agreement can arise because of notional
plurality
3 Research Studies
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Russian Agreement Attraction
English Conjunct Agreement & Duration
Analysis
Arabic-English Heritage Speakers
English Conjunct Agreement
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Can meaning intervene and influence syntax?
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The family of rats is living in my garage.
5 dollars are all you need.
Bacon and eggs are on the table.
Reading and writing are important for a child’s
success.
English Conjunct Agreement
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Can meaning intervene and influence syntax?
 The family of rats is living in my garage.
 The family of rats are living in my garage.
 5 dollars are all you need.
 5 dollars is all you need.
 Bacon and eggs are on the table.
 Bacon and eggs is on the table.
 Reading and writing are important for a child’s
success.
 Reading and writing is important for a child’s success.
English Conjunct Agreement
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Noun + Noun = ?
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What are the agreement properties of conjoined
noun phrases?
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Are conjunctions always plural?
If there is variability, is it semantically conditioned?
English Conjunct Agreement
Conjunct type
Examples from World Wide Web
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simple count
The month and day that a health benefits plan
first goes into effect becomes its anniversary
date… (www.cigna.com)
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simple mass
Any principal and interest on the notes is
payable… (www.news.moneycentral.msn.com)
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deverbal
Selecting and double-clicking on the entry
within the alarm log launches… (www.cisco.com)
English Conjunct Agreement
Verb Elicitation Procedure
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Play the beginning of a sentence
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Hear: “The milk and cheese”
Participant repeats sentence beginning and
finishes the sentence, telling us “where things are”
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Say: “The milk and cheese were on the table”
(Elicits verb: was, were, is, are)
English Conjunct Agreement
Verb Elicitation Procedure
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Four types of experimental preambles:
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Simple Count
Simple Mass
Deverbal Count
Deverbal Mass
“the name and address”
“the tea and coffee”
“the operation and recovery”
“the singing and dancing”
Prediction:
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Abstract and less enumerable noun phrases should “coalesce”, creating
noun phrases that are notionally singular, and producing singular verbs
More abstract
Deverbal Mass & Count
Less Abstract
Simple Mass
Simple Count
English Conjunct Agreement
Verb Elicitation Procedure
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Four types of experimental preambles:
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Simple Count
Simple Mass
Deverbal Count
Deverbal Mass
“the name and address”
“the tea and coffee”
“the operation and recovery”
“the singing and dancing”
Controls:
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Syllable Length balanced across all lists
Orders reversed for each item and for whole list
Constrained instruction set: “tell us where things are” – provides
highly uniform responses, but still “natural” production
English Conjunct Agreement
Proportion Singular Verbs by Conjunct
Type (Sentence Completion Task)
0.8
0.69
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.19
tea and coffee
0.4
0.42
disk and hardcopy
0.5
reading and writing
operation and recovery
singular verb proportion
0.6
museum and church
0.64
0.7
0
deverbal mass
deverbal count
simple mass
simple count
Conjunct type
dm: “the singing and dancing”
dc: “the operation and recovery”
sm: “the tea and coffee”
sc:“the name and address”
English Conjunct Agreement
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Meaning matters
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Conjunctions don’t have to be plural; speakers
can optionally view them as becoming one entity,
and therefore employ singular agreement
Abstract, non-enumerable nouns are more likely
to undergo coalescence, demonstrating semantic
influences on syntactic production
English Conjunct Agreement
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If “coalescence” is responsible for singular
agreement, we might be able to see a prosodic
correlate
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If "(X and Y) is" is a single unit
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Expect to see less of a pause after X
Perhaps a longer pause after the conjunction to create
prosodic unit?
"(X) and (Y) are" is built of two units
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Expect to see a greater pause after X
3 Research Studies
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Russian Agreement Attraction
English Conjunct Agreement & Duration
Analysis
Arabic-English Heritage Speakers
Arabic-English Heritage Speakers
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Hypothesis: Heritage speakers will have
predictable gaps in their grammars that…
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Participants: Egyptian and Jordanian Heritage
Speakers, and control groups of native speakers
Materials...
Procedure…