Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW
Volume 112, Issue 3, Pages 531-559Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.112.3.531
Keywords
verbs; pronouns; number agreement; language production; syntax
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Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [R01 HD21011] Funding Source: Medline
- NIMH NIH HHS [R01 MH66089] Funding Source: Medline
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Grammatical agreement flags the parts of sentences that belong together regardless of whether the parts appear together. In English, the major agreement controller is the sentence subject, the major agreement targets are verbs and pronouns, and the major agreement category is number. The authors expand an account of number agreement whose tenets are that pronouns acquire number lexically, whereas verbs acquire it syntactically but with similar contributions from number meaning and from the number morphology of agreement controllers. These tenets were instantiated in a model using existing verb agreement data. The model was then fit to a new, more extensive set of verb data and tested with a parallel set of pronoun data. The theory was supported by the model's outcomes. The results have implications for the integration of words and structures, for the workings of agreement categories, and for the nature of the transition from thought to language..
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