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Updated: May 21, 2026
08:32
Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
Against structural constraints in subject-verb agreement production.
Maureen Gillespie1, Neal J Pearlmutter
1Department of Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. mgillesp@illinois.edu
Summary
Syntactic structure
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Syntactic structure is crucial for agreement computation in language production.
- Previous research suggests clause-boundedness and hierarchical feature-passing influence agreement errors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of syntactic structure in agreement computation.
- To test the clause-boundedness effect in language production under controlled conditions.
Main Methods:
- Two studies compared agreement errors in prepositional phrase and relative clause modifiers.
- Modifiers were matched for properties influencing planning timing.
Main Results:
- More agreement errors occurred with plural local nouns.
- The predicted clause-boundedness effect was not observed in either study.
Conclusions:
- Findings suggest syntactic structure may play a limited role in agreement computation.
- Hierarchical processing might not be a necessary component of agreement during language production.
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