The role of syntactic structure on number agreement: a developmental perspective

Julie Franck
University of Geneva and Université catholique de Louvain

Stephany Cronel-Ohayon
University of Geneva and University Hospital Lausanne

Luigi Rizzi
University of Geneva and University of Siena

Cornelia Hamann, Lara Baranzini, Laurence Chillier, Ulrich Frauenfelder and Pascal Zesiger
University of Geneva

Previous research on agreement in adults has shown that interference during the process of agreement depends on the syntactic position of the interfering -local- noun in the sentence. Bock and Cutting (1992) showed that a local noun in a prepositional phrase attached to the head (e.g., The editor of the history books ARE...) generates more interference on number agreement of the following verb than a local noun in a relative clause (e.g., The editor who rejected the books ARE...). In the present study in French, interference with prepositional phrases (as in 1) was compared to interference with adjunct structures (as in 2). Participants heard sentence preambles illustrated by pictures which they were required to complete orally.

(1) La gagnante des derniers championnats FAIT...
(The winner of the last championships DOES)
(2) La grand-mère, en parlant aux fillettes, FAIT...
(The grandmother, while talking to the girls, DOES...)

The experiment was run on four groups of children aged 4;11, 5;11, 6;11 and 8;5 and on adults. Data reveal 3 important effects in evolution with age:

(a) effect of the number of the head noun, i.e. more errors with plural heads: in youngest children until age 6;11;
(b) effect of number mismatch, i.e. more errors when the head and local nouns have different numbers: from age 5;11 onwards;
(c) effect of syntactic structure, i.e. more errors with adjuncts: from age 8;5 onwards.

Although the use of the singular as default is widely acknowledged in young children, the finding of an early mismatch effect from age 5;11 contrasts with previous data (e.g., Fayol et al., 1999). Interestingly, our results suggest that the syntactic position of the interfering noun only starts to play a role on agreement at age 8;5. More importantly, the higher proportion of agreement errors with adjuncts, i.e. when the local noun is part of a separate clause from the subject, contrasts with Bock & Cutting's data. The main difference between the two studies is that whereas Bock & Cutting manipulated clauses that were part of the subject, in the present study adjuncts constitute a clause separate from the subject, i.e. part of the right branch of the syntactic tree. We argue that whereas in Bock and Cutting's study the
clausal boundary isolates the local noun from the subject head, contributing to reduce interference, adjuncts create a boundary between the subject and the verb, therefore increasing the risk of error.

References

Bock, J. K., & Cutting, J.C. (1992). Regulating mental energy: Performance units in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 99-127.

Fayol, M., Hupet, M., & Largy, P. (1999). The acquisition of subject-verb agreement in written French: From novices to experts. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11, 153-174.