Agreement and Attraction in Russian

Autor/inn/en	Lorimor, Heidi; Bock, Kathryn; Zalkind, Ekaterina; Sheyman, Alina; Beard, Robert
Titel	Agreement and Attraction in Russian
Quelle	In: Language and Cognitive Processes, 23 (2008) 6, S.769-799 (31 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0169-0965
Schlagwörter	Sentences; Morphology (Languages); Russian; Grammar; Native Speakers; Morphemes; Structural Grammar; Sentence Structure; Verbs; Nouns; Immigrants + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Morphology; Morphologie; Russisch; Grammatik; Muttersprachler; Morphem; Satzbau; Satzstruktur; Immigrant; Immigrantin; Immigranten
Abstract	We assessed whether and under what conditions noncanonical agreement patterns occur in Russian, with the goal of understanding the factors involved in normal agreement. Russian is a morphosyntactically rich language in which agreement involves features for number, gender, and case. If consistent, overt specification of number and gender agreement features supports agreement processes in language production, agreement should be less vulnerable to number and gender attraction than in languages with sparse agreement morphology. A related question was the degree to which notional number influences agreement patterns in morphologically rich languages. We varied the grammatical and notional number properties of sentence subjects and examined the effects on the predicate in sentence completion tasks using native Russian speakers. Noncanonical agreement occurred, but at rates lower than those observed in English and other languages without rich number morphology. Noncanonically plural predicates occurred more often after notionally plural subjects, suggesting notional number agreement, but the incidence was also lower than in languages with sparser agreement morphology. Gender attraction was almost nonexistent. The results suggest that morphology arbitrates grammatical agreement processes and reduces the impact of variations in notional number. (Contains 6 tables and 3 figures.) (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Psychology Press. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10