Empirical Research On Number Attraction In English Subject-Verb Agreement

Subject-verb number agreement is one of the important problems in the English grammar. The basic rule of English subject-verb agreement is that a singular subject takes a singular verb, while a plural subject takes a plural verb. However, subject-verb agreement processing is not as simple as what the basic rule states in real speech production. Speakers should not only consider the number specifications but also coordinate the relationship of constituents in sentence. Agreement errors tend to occur when the local noun in the phrase has a different number from the head noun, which is called as the principle of proximity or number attraction. In the Chinese language, there is not such a concept of subject-verb agreement for native Chinese speakers. The result is that on the influence of mother tongue transfer, Chinese learners of English would be more easily affected by attractors and then break the rule of subject-verb agreement. Adoption of subject-verb agreement in number involves complicated processing and mental mechanism, which is being studied by some linguists by analyzing subject-verb number agreement errors in spontaneous speech production. Several models have been proposed to portray the number attraction mechanism in subject-verb agreement:Feature Percolation Model, Marking and Morphing Model and Working Memory Retrieval Model. Up to date, foreign researches on number attraction are based on mother tongues. Nobody has made research on the mechanism of subject-verb agreement in the foreign language production by Chinese learners of English whose mother tongue is so different from the target language.The present paper models Staub's paradigm and designs experimental test materials according to the College English Curriculum of our country. The aim is to observe whether and how Chinese non-English majors are affected by number attractors when planning subject-verb agreement and to explain number attraction errors. The data collecting instrument of the experiment is the computer software for large-scale collection of latency data developed through the coordination of College of Foreign Studies and College of Computer Engineering in Guangxi Normal University in a provincial research project led by Prof. Zhang Shaolin in 2008. The research questions proposed in this thesis are as follows:1) what're the main effects and interaction effect of head noun's collectivity and local noun's attraction in accuracy rate and response time during the processing of subject-verb agreement? 2) Whether the configuration of plural head noun+singular attractor noun is significantly different from that of singular head noun+plural attractor noun in accuracy rate and response time during the processing of subject-verb agreement? 3) in accuracy rate and response time during the processing of subject-verb agreement, whether number attraction effects are significantly different when attractor noun in the preposition and in the relative clause? 4) Whether the psychological mechanism between non-intervening attraction and intervening attraction is similar? 5) Correct and erroneous subject-verb agreement decisions are similar in latency in the presence of a number attractor? In order to delve into the information that is concealed in the collected data and generalize the findings from the sample to the population from which the sample is selected, SPSS 11.5 is utilized to analyze 31 groups of valid data with descriptive and inferential statistical methods such as independent t-test and ANOVA analysis.In Experiment 1, compared with non number attractors, number attractors can significantly elicit more subject-verb agreement errors and increase latencies in subject-verb agreement; Compared with individual head noun, collective head noun elicit more plural verbs and increase latencies in subject-verb agreement; there is no interaction effect between collective head noun and number attractors in planning subject-verb agreement. In Experiment 2, the configuration of plural head noun+singular attractor noun is not significantly different from that of singular head noun+plural attractor noun in accuracy rate and response time during the processing of subject-verb agreement. In Experiment 3, number attraction effects are not significantly different between attractor noun in the preposition and in the relative clause in accuracy rate and response time during the processing of subject-verb agreement, which indicates that English native speakers are inclined to use hierarchical distance processing, while EFL university learners of China use more complicated and diversified methods to process the subject-verb agreement in the presence of number attractor, some employing linear distance processing and some hierarchical distance processing. Experiment 4 suggests that there are significant differences between intervening attraction and non-intervening attraction in accuracy rate but not in response time in planning subject-verb agreement. From the four experiments, it is certain that correct and erroneous subject-verb agreement decisions are similar in latency in the presence of a number attractor, which shows that number attractor also influences the processing of correct subject-verb agreement decision.The present study is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is an introduction which provides some background information of the study and presents the research objectives. Chapter Two presents the literature review of number attraction in subject-verb agreement at home and abroad. Chapter Three is the theoretical foundation of the research. Chapter Four provides a detailed description of participants, instruments, procedures of data collection and tools for statistical analyses. Chapter Five displays findings of the four experiments in the form of tables, together with explanations of the data in them. Chapter Six discusses the result of the experiments on the basis of the theoretical models and previous studies. Chapter Seven involves a brief conclusion, the implication and the limitation of this study.