An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality?
In English, subject-verb agreement is deemed to be ‘local’ if the controller (i.e., the subject) and the target (i.e., the main verb) are adjacent, but ‘non-local’ if these items are separated by one or more terminal nodes. Previous research indicates that second language English learners whose firs...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2023
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/21599/1/57789-204825-1-PB.pdf |
| _version_ | 1796933459403341824 |
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| author | Austin, Gavin Huong Thi Linh Nguyen, Huong Thi Thu Nguyen, |
| author_facet | Austin, Gavin Huong Thi Linh Nguyen, Huong Thi Thu Nguyen, |
| author_sort | Austin, Gavin |
| collection | UKM |
| description | In English, subject-verb agreement is deemed to be ‘local’ if the controller (i.e., the subject) and the target (i.e., the main verb) are adjacent, but ‘non-local’ if these items are separated by one or more terminal nodes. Previous research indicates that second language English learners whose first languages lack subject-verb agreement tend to supply inflection for this functional category less accurately in non-adjacent than adjacent contexts in spoken production. This asymmetry could be driven by either adjacency or locality, since, for subject-verb agreement at least, these two
properties are aligned with each other. Phrase-internal agreement, by contrast, is local regardless of whether the controller (i.e., a determiner or quantifier) and the target (i.e., a noun) are adjacent or non-adjacent; hence, for this type of agreement, adjacency and locality are not aligned with each other. In the present study, we gave a sentence-construction task to 64 native speakers of Vietnamese, a language without inflection for number agreement. Suppliance of inflection was lower in non-adjacent than adjacent contexts phrase-internally, and therefore within the local domain itself. We concluded that what gave rise to the asymmetries in inflectional production in
our study, and, by extension, also in previous research on subject-verb agreement, was not the distinction between local and non-local domains, but rather the one between adjacent and nonadjacent contexts for agreement. In so doing, we present a more parsimonious analysis of asymmetries in the spoken production of agreement inflection than the one currently available. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T04:47:32Z |
| format | Article |
| id | ukm.eprints-21599 |
| institution | Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T04:47:32Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publisher | Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ukm.eprints-215992023-05-19T08:58:30Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/21599/ An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality? Austin, Gavin Huong Thi Linh Nguyen, Huong Thi Thu Nguyen, In English, subject-verb agreement is deemed to be ‘local’ if the controller (i.e., the subject) and the target (i.e., the main verb) are adjacent, but ‘non-local’ if these items are separated by one or more terminal nodes. Previous research indicates that second language English learners whose first languages lack subject-verb agreement tend to supply inflection for this functional category less accurately in non-adjacent than adjacent contexts in spoken production. This asymmetry could be driven by either adjacency or locality, since, for subject-verb agreement at least, these two properties are aligned with each other. Phrase-internal agreement, by contrast, is local regardless of whether the controller (i.e., a determiner or quantifier) and the target (i.e., a noun) are adjacent or non-adjacent; hence, for this type of agreement, adjacency and locality are not aligned with each other. In the present study, we gave a sentence-construction task to 64 native speakers of Vietnamese, a language without inflection for number agreement. Suppliance of inflection was lower in non-adjacent than adjacent contexts phrase-internally, and therefore within the local domain itself. We concluded that what gave rise to the asymmetries in inflectional production in our study, and, by extension, also in previous research on subject-verb agreement, was not the distinction between local and non-local domains, but rather the one between adjacent and nonadjacent contexts for agreement. In so doing, we present a more parsimonious analysis of asymmetries in the spoken production of agreement inflection than the one currently available. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2023-02 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/21599/1/57789-204825-1-PB.pdf Austin, Gavin and Huong Thi Linh Nguyen, and Huong Thi Thu Nguyen, (2023) An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality? GEMA ; Online Journal of Language Studies, 23 (1). pp. 1-16. ISSN 1675-8021 https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1578 |
| spellingShingle | Austin, Gavin Huong Thi Linh Nguyen, Huong Thi Thu Nguyen, An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality? |
| title | An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality? |
| title_full | An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality? |
| title_fullStr | An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality? |
| title_full_unstemmed | An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality? |
| title_short | An asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language English : adjacency or locality? |
| title_sort | asymmetry in the spoken production of number agreement in second language english adjacency or locality |
| url | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/21599/1/57789-204825-1-PB.pdf |
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