The Notional Number Attraction for Subject-Verb Agreement Errors During L2

Online Sentence Processing:A Preliminary Study

CONCLUSION

1. The notional number attractionphenomenon was evident in L2processing

2. Representation vulnerability of L2learners’ grammatical and notionalnumber features was found

Kunihiro KUSANAGIGraduate School, Nagoya University

JSPS Research Fellow

Yu TAMURAGraduate School, Nagoya University

Junya FUKUTAGraduate School, Nagoya University

JSPS Research Fellow

Oral Presentation at the 9th JSSS Open Forum

12/10/2014, Kansei-Gakuin Univ., Osaka

Mail: kusanagi@nagoya-u.jp

OUTLINE

• Background

• Research Questions

• The Present Study

• Results

• DIscussion

BACKGROUND

• L2 learners’ online insensitivity to subject-verb number mismatches

• Jiang (2004, 2007), Jiang et al. (2011)

–Rudimentary implicit knowledge

–Unautomatized skill

BACKGROUND

• Sources of difficulty and attainability– Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis

• e.g., Prevost and White (2000)

– Representation Deficit Hypothesis• e.g., Hawkins (2005)

– Morphological Congruency Hypothesis• e.g., Jiang et al. (2011)

– Transfer Hypothesis• e.g., Nicol and Greth (2003), but see Hoshino et al. (2010)

– Interpretability Hypothesis• e.g., Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007)

BACKGROUND

• More in general …–Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH)

–e.g., Clahsen and Felser (2006)

• L2 learners underutilize syntactic, morphological, and morphosyntactic information during their online processing

• Rather tend to rely much more on lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information– cf. Good Enough approach (GE, Lim and

Christianson, 2013), and other task-related factors

BACKGROUND

• Agreement Procedures– Controller

– Attractor

– Target

BACKGROUND

• Broken Agreement Phenomenon• Bock and Cutting (1992), Bock and Eberhard (1993), Jiang

(2004), Pearlmutter et al (1999),

“The key[C_sg] to the cabinet[A_sg] was/were[T_sg]”“The key[C_sg] to the cabinets[A_pl] was/were[T_sg]”

–Again, L2 learners are (supposed to be) insensitive to such a grammatical attraction (Jiang, 2004)

“The gang on the motorcycles”– (Humphrey and Bock, 2005)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/everyone-in-motorcycle-gang-jewish,32398/

BACKGROUND

• Notional Number Attraction • Bock and Cutting (1992), Bock and Eberhard (1993), Eberhard

(1999), Hoshino et al. (2010), Humphrey and Bock (2005)

– In English, number agreement process is simply driven by “grammatical” number features

–But, what about L2 learners?

BACKGROUND

• Jiang’s and others subsequent studies make us predict:– L2 learners’ grammatical number representation

is null, or at least inaccessible in online tasks

• SSH makes us predict:

– L2 learners’ are possibly sensitive to notional numbers, not grammatical ones

RESEARCH QUESTION

• RQ. Is notional number attraction phenomenon evident in L2 learners’ online sentence processing?

THE PRESENT STUDY

• Participants– Twenty-eight highly proficient Japanese learners

of English (undergraduate/graduate students)

M SD Skewness Kurtosis

TOEIC 768.70 127.37 -0.17 -0.52

Age 24.14 3.88 1.47 3.18

Self-Report

Reading 3.14 1.04 -0.30 -0.86

Writing 3.23 0.92 -0.10 -1.14

Listening 3.05 1.05 0.18 -0.40

Speaking 2.91 0.92 -0.61 -0.15

Vocabulary 2.73 1.03 0.04 0.02

Grammar 3.05 1.17 -0.29 -0.47

THE PRESENT STUDY

• Task– Self-paced reading tasks

• Moving window

• Word by word

• 5 interest regions

• 6 conditions– 4 items for each (k = 24) + 24 fillers → K = 48

– Counter-balanced

– 8-10 words

THE PRESENT STUDY

• Conditions of Stimuli– Control (of which attractors are both

grammatically and notionally singular)• Everyone in the room [was/were] …

– Notional Attraction (grammatically singular, notionally plural, corrective nouns)• Everyone in the family [was/were] …

– Grammatical Attraction (both grammatically and notionally plural)• Everyone in the halls [was/were] …

THE PRESENT STUDY

• Attraction Words– Control (normal nouns, singular)

• office, restaurant, school, house, bar, park, theater…

– Notional Attraction (corrective nouns)

• team, company, audience, crew, family, class, band…

– Grammatical Attraction (normal nouns, plural)

• stands, cars, films, halls, pictures, pages…

THE PRESENT STUDY

• Summary of the Stimuli

Controller Attractor

Target Examples

Grammatical Notional Grammatical Notional

Controll_G [sg] [pl] [sg] [sg] [sg] Everyone in the room was

Controll_U [sg] [Pl] [sg] [sg] [pl] Everyone in the room were

Notional_G [sg] [pl] [sg] [pl] [sg] Everyone in the family was

Notional_U [sg] [pl] [sg] [pl] [pl] Everyone in the family were

Grammatical_G [sg] [Pl] [pl] [pl] [sg] Everyone in the halls was

Grammatical_U [sg] [pl] [Pl] [pl] [pl] Everyone in the halls were

THE PRESENT STUDY

• Regions

– Everyone | in | the[-1] | room[Attractor] | was/were[Target] | writing[+1] | the[+2] | …

THE PRESENT STUDY

• Analysis– Outlier

• Removed over +2SD reactions

– Log transformation• Base = 10

– MANOVA for overall reading time data• 5 by 2 by 3

– ANOVA for the main target region• 2 by 3

– Pair comparisons for attraction effects• Interval estimation of effect sizes

Results

• Overall Reading Times (row data)

0

200

400

600

800

-2 Attractor Target 1 2

Mean

Read

ing

Tim

e (

ms)

Region

Control_G Control_U

Notional_G Notional_U

Grammatical_G Grammatical_U

Results

• Overall Reading Times (row data)

0

200

400

600

800

-2 Attractor Target 1 2

Mean

Read

ing

Tim

e (

ms)

Region

Control_G Control_U

Notional_G Notional_U

Grammatical_G Grammatical_U

Results

• The main interest region (Target)

2.60

2.65

2.70

2.75

2.80

Control Notional Attraction

Grammatical Attraction

Log

Tran

sfo

med

Mea

n R

ead

ing

Tim

es

Condition

Grammatical (Singular)

Ungrammatical (Plural)

Results

• ANOVA (Target)

MS F p ηp2

Grammaticality 0.04 3.20 .09 .11

Attraction 0.03 3.03 .07 .10

Interaction 0.02 2.68 .08 .09

Grammaticality on Control 0.05 10.62 <.01 .28

Grammaticality on Notional Attraction < 0.01 0.14 .71 .01

Grammaticality on Grammatical Attraction 0.02 2.27 .14 .08

Attraction on Grammatical 0.04 5.89 <.01 .18

Attraction on Ungrammatical 0.04 0.42 .55 .02

2.60

2.65

2.70

2.75

2.80

Control Notional Attraction

Grammatical Attraction

Mea

n R

ead

ing

Tim

e (m

s)

Condition

Grammatical (Singular)

Ungrammatical (Plural)

2.60

2.65

2.70

2.75

2.80

Control Notional Attraction

Grammatical Attraction

Mea

n R

ead

ing

Tim

e (m

s)

Condition

Grammatical (Singular)

Ungrammatical (Plural)

Results

• Pair Comparisons

d = 0.48 [0.16, 0.79]g = 0.46 [0.16, 0.77]r = .53

d = 0.07 [-0.32, 0.47]g = 0.07 [-0.32, 0.46]r = .07

d = 0.25 [-0.09 , 0.60]g = 0.24 [-0.09, 0.59]r = .28

Results

• Scatter Plots

400 600 800 1000 1200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Controll

Grammatical

Ungra

mm

atic

al

400 600 800 1000 1200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Notional Attraction

Grammatical

Ungra

mm

atic

al

400 600 800 1000 1200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Grammatical Attraction

Grammatical

Ungra

mm

atic

al

DISCUSSION

• Summary– In the control condition, the participants

exhibited sensitivity to subject-verb number mismatch (against Jiang’s studies)

– Both the notional and grammatical number attraction phenomena were evident, showing the participants’ insensitivity to number mismatches

DISCUSSION

• Representation Vulnerability – L2 learners are potentially able to assign

grammatical and notional number features

– But, L2 learners fail to utilize grammatical number features robustly

– Representations of grammatical and notional numbers tend to be interchangeable, and mistakenly utilized in some linguistic environments

DISCUSSION

• Future Studies

–More various linguistic environments

–Other tasks

–Other levels of learners

–Replications

–Considering the effects of notional number features

REFERNCES

• Bock, K.,& Cutting, J. C. (1992). Regulating mental energy: Performance units in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 99–127.

• Bock, K., & Eberhard, K. M. (1993). Meaning, sound and syntax in English number agreement. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 57–99.

• Bock, K., & Miller, C. A. (1991). Broken agreement. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 45–93.

• Clahsen, H. & Felser, C. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 3–42.

• Eberhard, K. M. (1999). The accessibility of conceptual number to the processes of subject–verb agreement in English. Journal of Memory & Language, 41, 560–578.

• Hawkins, R. (2005). Explaining full and partial success in the acquisition of second language grammatical properties. Second Language, 4, 7–25.

• Hoshino, N., Dussias, P. E., & Kroll, J. F. (2010). Processing subject–verb agreement in a second language depends on proficiency. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 87–98.

• Humphrey, K. R., & Bock, K. (2005). Notional number agreement in English. PsychonomicBulletin & Review, 12, 689–695.

• Jiang, N. (2004). Morphological insensitivity in second language processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 603–634.

REFERNCES

• Jiang, N. (2007). Selective integration of linguistic knowledge in adult second language learning. Language Learning, 57, 1–33.

• Jiang, N., Novokshanova, E., Masuda, K., & Wang, X. (2011). Morphological congruency and the acquisition of L2 morphemes. Language Learning, 61, 940–967.

• Lim, J. H., & Christianson, K. (2013). Integrating meaning and structure in L1–L2 and L2–L1 translations. Second Language Research, 29, 233–256.

• Nicol , J., & Greth, D. (2003). Production of subject-verb agreement in Spanish as a second language. Experimental Psychology, 50, 196–203.

• Pearlmutter, N. J., Garnsey, S. M., & Bock, K. (1999). Agreement processes in sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 427–456.

• Prevost, P., & White, L. (2000). Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement. Second Language Research, 16, 103–133.

• Tsimpli, I. M., & Dimitrakopoulou, M. (2007). The Interpretability Hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 23, 215–242.

The Notional Number Attraction for Subject-Verb Agreement Errors During

L2 Online Sentence Processing:A Preliminary Study

Kunihiro KUSANAGIGraduate School, Nagoya UniversityJSPS Research Fellow

Yu TAMURAGraduate School, Nagoya University

Junya FUKUTAGraduate School, Nagoya UniversityJSPS Research Fellow

Oral Presentation at the 9th JSSS Open Forum12/10/2014, Kansei-Gakuin Univ., Osaka

Mail: kusanagi@nagoya-u.jp

0

200

400

600

800

-2 Attractor Target 1 2

Mean

Read

ing

Tim

e (

ms)

Region

Control_G Control_U

Notional_G Notional_U

Grammatical_G Grammatical_U

2.60

2.65

2.70

2.75

2.80

Control Notional Attraction

Grammatical Attraction

Mea

n R

ead

ing

Tim

e (m

s)

Condition

Grammatical (Singular)

Ungrammatical (Plural)

1. The notional number attraction phenomenon was evident inL2 processing

2. Representation vulnerability of L2 learners’ grammatical andnotional number features was found