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Hierarchical structure and memory mechanisms in agreement attraction

Contributeurs/tricesFranck, Julie; Wagers, Matthew
Publié dansPLOS ONE, vol. 15, no. 5, e0232163
Date de publication2020
Résumé

Speakers occasionally produce verbs that agree with an element that is not the subject, a so-called ‘attractor'; likewise, comprehenders occasionally fail to notice agreement errors when the verb agrees with the attractor. Cross-linguistic studies converge in showing that attraction is modulated by the hierarchical position of the attractor in the sentence structure. We report two experiments exploring the link between structural position and memory representations in attraction. The method used is innovative in two respects: we used jabberwocky materials to control for semantic influences and focus on structural agreement processing, and we used a Speed-Accuracy Trade-off (SAT) design combined with a memory probe recognition task, as classically used in list memorization tasks. SAT enabled the joint measurement of retrieval speed and retrieval accuracy of subjects and attractors in sentences that typically elicit attraction errors. Experiment 1 first established that attraction arises in jabberwocky sentences, to a similar extent and showing structure-dependency effects, as in natural sentences. Experiment 2 showed a close alignment between the attraction profiles found in Experiment 1 and memory parameters. Results support a content addressable architecture of memory representations for sentences in which nouns' accessibility depends on their syntactic position, while subjects are kept in the focus of attention.

Citation (format ISO)
FRANCK, Julie, WAGERS, Matthew. Hierarchical structure and memory mechanisms in agreement attraction. In: PLOS ONE, 2020, vol. 15, n° 5, p. e0232163. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232163
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ISSN du journal1932-6203
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Création21.01.2021 16:14:00
Première validation21.01.2021 16:14:00
Heure de mise à jour15.03.2023 23:58:24
Changement de statut15.03.2023 23:58:23
Dernière indexation17.01.2024 12:19:50
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