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Number Attraction in Pronoun Production
Margaret Kandel1, Cassidy R Wyatt2, Colin Phillips2,3
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Open Mind : Discoveries in Cognitive Science
|November 15, 2024
Summary
Pronoun form is determined by agreement with the antecedent, not just message-level representation. This explains why pronoun errors are rare in natural speech, unlike verb agreement errors.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Pronoun production involves selecting a referent and determining pronoun form.
- Previous research suggests pronouns might be susceptible to agreement attraction errors, similar to verbs, but this is not observed in natural speech corpora.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether pronoun form determination is a byproduct of referent access or an agreement process.
- To reconcile discrepancies between lab findings and natural speech observations regarding pronoun attraction errors.
Main Methods:
- Elicited pronoun sentences using a scene description paradigm to simulate natural speech processes.
- Conducted three experiments to observe pronoun number attraction effects.
Main Results:
- Observed small but reliable number attraction effects for pronouns across experiments.
- Elicited error rates were lower than those previously reported for verbs in similar paradigms.
Conclusions:
- Pronoun form is not solely determined by the message-level representation of the referent.
- Pronoun form determination involves an agreement process referencing the linguistic antecedent.
- The findings help explain the lower rate of pronoun attraction errors in natural speech compared to verbs.
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