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Effect of syntactic complexity on the implementation of subject-verb agreement in a non-native language Ming-Wei Ernest Lee The implementation of subject-verb number agreement in spoken English is influenced by the syntactic complexity of the subject NP: In a spoken sentence completion task, native English speakers often produce a number agreement error on the verb immediately following a complex subject NP when the head and 'local' nouns of the subject NP mismatch in number and the mismatching local noun is in a PP ((b), compared to (a)), but not when there is a number mismatch and the mismatching local noun is in a separate clause ((d), compared to (c)) (Bock & Cutting, 1992). a The claim about the newborn baby (Head/Local Match, PP) The present study investigates the 'learnability' of native-like agreement
implementation by examining whether sensitivity to syntactic complexity
can be found in agreement implementation by competent users of English
as a second language whose first language is or is not similar to English
in terms of subject-verb agreement and head direction. Advanced Chinese
and Spanish learners of English were tested on subject NPs like (a)
to (d) in a spoken sentence completion task conducted in English. Participants
were screened in order to ascertain that they had acquired, and were
using fairly reliably, the basic subject-verb number agreement rule
in English. The syntactic complexity effect was found in the Spanish
participants, who produced more agreement errors in (b) than in (a)
but were no more likely to produce errors in (d) than in (c). In contrast,
the number mismatch between the head and local nouns affected both the
PP and clause conditions in the Chinese participants: (b) and (d) elicited
significantly more errors than (a) and (c) respectively. It is impossible
to conclude from the present data whether the Spanish participants were
using their L1 processing mechanisms to process their L2 or they were
using independent L2 mechanisms, to which the representations and/or
processes of the L1 mechanisms had been transferred (assuming that the
syntactic complexity effect could also be found in their native language).
What is clear is that proficient Chinese learners of English (whose
L1 has no subject-verb agreement and places head nouns after their modifiers/complements)
implemented subject-verb number agreement in a Reference |