Number attraction in verb and anaphor production

Journal article

Prior production research using the preamble-completion paradigm has elicited similar number attraction effects for both verbs and anaphora. However, this paradigm relies on comprehension and memory processes in addition to language production, making it difficult to assess the extent to which the observed attraction effects are caused by factors active during more natural production. In four production experiments, we compared number attraction effects on subject–verb and reflexive–antecedent agreement using a novel scene-description task in addition to a more traditional preamble elicitation paradigm. While the results from the preamble task align with prior findings, the more naturalistic scene-description task produced a contrast between the two dependency types, with robust verb attraction but very low rates of anaphor attraction. In addition to analyzing agreement error distributions, we also analyzed the production time-course of participant responses, finding timing effects that pattern with error distributions, even when no error is present. We discuss potential sources of variable susceptibility to number attraction, suggesting that differences may arise from the time-course of information processing across tasks and linguistic dependencies.

Authors: Kandel, M; Phillips, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Journal of Memory and Language
• Volume: 127
• Article number: 104370
• Publication date: 2022-09-12
• Acceptance date: 2022-08-05
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2022.104370
• EISSN: 1096-0821
• ISSN: 0749-596X
• Language: English
• Keywords: language production; reflexive pronouns; verb agreement; agreement attraction; anaphora