Premium
A Self‐Organizing Approach to Subject–Verb Number Agreement
Author(s) -
Smith Garrett,
Franck Julie,
Tabor Whitney
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1111/cogs.12591
Subject(s) - notional amount , verb , agreement , computer science , sentence processing , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , noun phrase , sentence , noun , linguistics , numeral system , subject (documents) , philosophy , finance , library science , economics
Abstract We present a self‐organizing approach to sentence processing that sheds new light on notional plurality effects in agreement attraction, using pseudopartitive subject noun phrases (e.g., a bottle of pills ). We first show that notional plurality ratings (numerosity judgments for subject noun phrases) predict verb agreement choices in pseudopartitives, in line with the “Marking” component of the Marking and Morphing theory of agreement processing. However, no account to date has derived notional plurality values from independently needed principles of language processing. We argue on the basis of new experimental evidence and a dynamical systems model that the theoretical black box of notional plurality can be unpacked into objectively measurable semantic features. With these semantic features driving structure formation (and hence agreement choice), our model reproduces the human verb production patterns as a byproduct of normal processing. Finally, we discuss how the self‐organizing approach might be extended to other agreement attraction phenomena.