Conceptual and Grammatical Plurality of Conjoined NPs in L2 Sentence Comprehension/JASELE2016

Tamura, Y. (2016). Conceptual and grammatical plurality of conjoined NPs in L2 sentence comprehension. Paper presented at The 42nd Annual Conference of the Japan Society of English Language Education (JASELE 2016). Saitama, Japan.

Transcript

1. Conceptual and Grammatical
   Plurality of Conjoined NPs in
   L2 Sentence Comprehension
   August 20, 2016
   The 42nd JASELE
   Dokkyo University
   1
   

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2. Overview
   • Introduction
   • Background
   • The Present Study
   • Results
   • Discussion
   2
   

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3. Overview
   • Introduction
   • Background
   • The Present Study
   • Results
   • Discussion
   3
   

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4. Yu TAMURA
   Graduate School, Nagoya University
   Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
   4
   

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5. Overview
   • Introduction
   • Background
   • The Present Study
   • Results
   • Discussion
   5
   

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6. • Mike and Tom are/*is going to help us.
   • Coordinate NPs = always plural? -> NO
   • It depends on the referent
   • Harry and only Harry is/*are going to be allowed to
   read this.
   • Pickles and ice cream is delicious.
   • Pickles and ice cream are delicious.
   (Morgan, 1984, p.72)
   Semantic properties matter!
   Number determination
   6
   Background
   

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7. • Always semantics win? -> NO
   • * There are a cat and a dog in the yard.
   • There is a cat and a dog in the yard.
   • Native speakers of English tend to make the first
   conjunct agreement (Sobin, 1997)
   Number determination is a mixture of syntax,
   morphology, and semantics
   • In this study, I will use conceptual plurality to refer to the
   semantics of number.
   Number determination
   7
   Background
   

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8. Mechanism for L1 Production
   8
   Background
   •Marking and Morphing (Bock, Eberhard, & Cutting, 2004)
   •Marking (Clause level procedure)
   •conceptual number -> grammatical number
   Subject -> plural
   Subject -> singular
   

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9. Mechanism for L1 Production
   9
   Background
   •Marking and Morphing (Bock, Eberhard, & Cutting, 2004)
   •Morphing (Phrase level procedure)
   •Morphological number -> grammatical number
   bananas
   scissors
   NP[plural]
   NP[plural]
   

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10. Mechanism for L1 Production
    10
    Background
    • Conceptual number and grammatical number sometimes differ
    • Scissors, tweezers, etc.
    • Conceptually singular but grammatically plural
    • Family, audience, etc.
    • Conceptually plural but grammatically singular
    • Conceptual number could override grammatical number
    (Humphreys & Bock, 2005; Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Garrett,
    1996)
    • The two number marking processes are independent (Bock et al.,
    2004)
    • Marking and Morphing approach works for L1 sentence
    comprehension too(Wagers, Lau, & Phillips, 2009)
    

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11. • Processing plural morphemes is difficult for L2 learners
    • They know the rule but can’t use it in online (Jiang,
    2004, 2007, Jiang et al., 2011)
    • What is easier for L2 learners?
    • Syntactically denoted plurality (Shibuya &
    Wakabayashi, 2008)
    • e.g., Tom and Mary
    • Lexically denoted plurality (e.g., Jiang et al., 2015)
    • e.g., these books, several bags, two cats, many
    apples
    Processing Plurality in SLA
    11
    Background
    

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12. • Garden-path effects (Tamura et al., 2015)
    • (a) When the lovers kissed the boy played…
    • (b) When the boy and the girl kissed the boy played…
    • No garden-path effects in (b)
    • L2 learners are capable of representing conjoined NPs
    as conceptually plural
    • Is syntactically denoted plurality easier?
    • Shibuya and Wakabayashi (2008) only investigated over
    the use of the third-person singular -s
    • e.g., Tom and Mary cook/*cooks…
    Conceptual Plurality in L2 Comprehension
    12
    Background
    

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13. • Advanced L2 learners were able to utilize conceptual
    number information during production (Foote, 2010)
    • Few studies investigated the role of conceptual number
    information during sentence comprehension (except
    Kusanagi, Tamura, Fukuta, 2015; Tamura et al., 2015)
    Problems
    13
    Background
    Shouldn’t we examine conceptual number processing in
    L2 sentence comprehension?
    

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14. • Number agreement between the conjoined NP and
    copula
    • e.g., My mother and his father *is/are in New York City.
    • Two possibilities
    • Conceptual plurality ̋ & Grammatical plurality ̋
    • Conceptual plurality ̋ & Grammatical plurality ☓
    Hypothesis
    14
    Background
    Focus of the present study
    

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15. Overview
    • Introduction
    • Background
    • The Present Study
    • Results
    • Discussion
    15
    

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16. • 32 Japanese undergraduate and graduate students
    • Identical to those who participated in Tamura et al.
    (2015)
    Participants
    16
    The Present Study
    n M SD Min Max skew kurtosis
    Age 31 24.77 5.35 20 40 1.57 1.23
    TOEIC 32 824.22 113.12 550 990 -0.61 -0.44
    Study abroad
    (month)
    18 11.36 13.28 0.5 54 1.89 3.28
    Years of
    learning
    English
    32 13.59 5.85 8 36 2.18 5.05
    Starting age 31 11.03 4.66 2 25 1.02 2.47
    Table 1.
    Demographic Information of the Participants
    

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17. • Word by word self-paced reading task on PC
    • developed by Hot Soup Processor (ver 3.3.2)
    Experiment
    17
    The Present Study
    __ ___ __ __ ___ _____ __ _____ ___ ____
    The ____ __ __ ___ _____ __ _____ ___ ___
    ____ mother __ _____ __ _____ ___ ____
    ____ __ boy __ ___ _____ __ _____ ___ ___
    ____ __ boy __ ___ _____ __ _____ ___ ___
    ___ ____ __ _____ __ _____ ___ __ now. __
    ____ __ ___ __ ___ _____ __ _____ ___ ࣍΁
    

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18. • 20 pairs of target sentences (DP and DP BE PP)
    • *The mother and his son is in the cottage now.
    • The mother and his son are in the cottage now.
    • 68 distractor items
    • One-third of the distractor items was followed by
    comprehension questions
    • Mean Accuracy of the comprehension questions
    • 82.8% (SD = 11.4)
    • Two counterbalanced lists
    • Two sessions with a few minutes break
    Materials
    18
    The Present Study
    

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19. • Outliers
    • Each participant’s means and SDs of RTs in each
    condition were calculated
    • Responses above the Mean RTs +/- 3SD were
    removed
    • Responses below 200ms were removed
    • Overall, 4.4% of all the responses were removed
    Analysis
    19
    The Present Study
    

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20. • Generalized Linear Mixed-Effects Model (GLMM) by R 3.3.0
    • Explanatory variables
    • Agreement condition (2 levels)
    • singular or plural
    •Covariate
    •The number of letters
    •Response variables
    •Raw RTs
    • Distribution family and link function
    • Inverse-Gaussian distribution and identity-link
    Analysis
    20
    The Present Study
    

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21. Overview
    • Introduction
    • Background
    • The Present Study
    • Results
    • Discussion
    21
    

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22. Reading Time Differences
    22
    Results
    father is/are in New York
    sg 593 (194) 471 (113) 462 (134) 478 (134) 535 (153)
    pl 570 (187) 486 (104) 434 (82) 441 (110) 519 (130)
    Table 2.
    Mean RTs (ms) and SDs (parentheses) in each condition
    Note. sg = singular; pl = plural
    

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23. Reading Time Differences
    23
    Results
    father is/are in New York
    sg 593 (194) 471 (113) 462 (134) 478 (134) 535 (153)
    pl 570 (187) 486 (104) 434 (82) 441 (110) 519 (130)
    Table 2.
    Mean RTs (ms) and SDs (parentheses) in each condition
    Note. sg = singular; pl = plural
    

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24. Reading Time Differences
    24
    Results
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    200
    300
    400
    500
    600
    700
    father is/are in New York
    RT(ms)
    sg
    pl
    

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25. Reading Time Differences
    25
    Results
    0
    100
    200
    300
    400
    500
    600
    700
    father is/are in New York
    RT(ms)
    sg
    pl
    

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26. Reading Time Differences
    26
    Results
    father is/are in
    New York
    Note. Dotted lines are mean RTs
    

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27. Region 4
    27
    Results
    Random effects
    Fixed effects By Subject By Items
    Parameters Estimate SE t p SD SD
    Intercept 617.34 37.55 16.44 c.letters 16.33 7.98 2.05 .04 — —
    Condition 7.30 19.93 0.37 .71 64.47 —
    My mother and his father is/are in New York City.
    Table 3.
    The Results of GLMM in Region 4
    

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28. Region 5
    28
    Results
    My mother and his father is/are in New York City.
    Random effects
    Fixed effects By Subject By Items
    Parameters Estimate SE t p SD SD
    Intercept 496.45 35.85 13.85 c.letters -3.84 21.17 -0.18 .86 — —
    Condition -21.50 27.15 -0.79 .43 26.39 45.39
    Table 4.
    The Results of GLMM in Region 5
    

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29. Region 6
    29
    Results
    My mother and his father is/are in New York City.
    Random effects
    Fixed effects By Subject By Items
    Parameters Estimate SE t p SD SD
    Intercept 509.78 24.21 21.06 c.letters 25.88 7.08 3.66 Condition 26.06 18.75 1.39 .16 63.72 —
    Table 4.
    The Results of GLMM in Region 6
    

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30. Region 7
    30
    Results
    My mother and his father is/are in New York City.
    Random effects
    Fixed effects By Subject By Items
    Parameters Estimate SE t p SD SD
    Intercept 500.70 24.41 20.51 c.letters 30.63 8.09 3.79 Condition 26.77 21.96 1.22 .22 77.49 —
    Table 5.
    The Results of GLMM in Region 7
    

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31. Overview
    • Introduction
    • Background
    • The Present Study
    • Results
    • Discussion
    31
    

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32. • No reading time differences between singular and
    plural agreement conditions in the target region
    • No spill-over effects were found in Region 6 and 7
    Summary of the Results
    32
    Discussion
    

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33. • The participants succeeded in using conceptual
    plurality in processing conjoined NP (Tamura et al.,
    2015)
    • However, in this study
    • The same participants did not notice number
    agreement mismatches (A and B *is/are….)
    • They failed to utilize grammatical number
    Two Types of Plurality
    33
    Discussion
    

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34. Processing Mechanism
    34
    Discussion
    Tamura et al. (2015)
    the boy and the girl
    The Present Study
    the boy and the girl [plural]
    

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35. Discussion
    Temporal comprehension processing model
    [My mother and his father]
    NP NP
    and
    ConjP
    NP[ ]
    Subject
    Object
    pl
    MESSAGE
    35
    

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36. • Questions remained unsolved
    • Can L2 learners of English extract conceptual
    plurality from morphological plurality?
    • bananas ->
    • Can L2 learners of English extract conceptual
    plurality from morphological plurality if lexical support
    is provided?
    • these bananas ->
    Future Directions
    36
    Discussion
    

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37. Bock, K., Eberhard, K. M., & Cutting, J. C. (2004). Producing number agreement: How pronouns equal verbs. Journal of Memory
    and Language, 51, 251–278. doi10.1016/j.jml.2004.04.005
    Foote, R. (2010). Age of acquisition and proficiency as factors in language production: Agreement in bilinguals. Bilingualism:
    Language and Cognition, 13, 99–118. doi:10.1017/S136672890999040X
    Humphreys, K. R., & Bock, K. (2005). Notional number agreement in English. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 689–95.
    Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16447383
    Jiang, N. (2004). Morphological insensitivity in second language processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 603–634. doi:10.1017/
    S0142716404001298
    Jiang, N. (2007). Selective integration of linguistic knowledge in adult second language learning. Language Learning, 57, 1–33. doi:
    10.1111/j.1467-9922.2007.00397.x
    Jiang, N., Hu, G., Chrabaszcz, A., & Ye, L. (2015). The activation of grammaticalized meaning in L2 processing: Toward an
    explanation of the morphological congruency effect. International Journal of Bilingualism. Advance Online Publication doi:
    10.1177/1367006915603823
    Kusanagi, K., Tamura, Y., & Fukuta, J. (2015). The notional number attraction in English as a foreign language: A self-paced
    reading study. Journal of the Japan Society for Speech Sciences, 16, 77–96.
    Morgan, J. L. (1984). Some problems of determination in English number agreement. In Proceedings of the Eastern States
    conference on linguistics (pp. 69–78). Columbus, OH: Ohio State University.
    Shibuya, M., & Wakabayashi, S. (2008). Why are L2 learners not always sensitive to subject-verb agreement? EUROSLA
    Yearbook, 8, 235–258. doi:10.1075/eurosla.8.13shi
    Sobin, N. (1997). Agreement, default rules, and grammatical viruses. Linguistic Inquiry, 28, 318–343. Retrieved from http://
    www.jstor.org/stable/info/4178979
    Tamura, Y., Fukuta, J., Nishimura, Y., Harada, Y., Hara, K., & Kato, D. (2015). Conceptual plurality in Japanese EFL learners’ online
    sentence processing: A case of garden-path sentences with reciprocal verbs. Paper presented at the 41st Annual Conference of
    the Japan Society of English Language Education (JASELE 2015). Kumamoto, Japan.
    Vigliocco, G., Hartsuiker, R. J., Jarema, G., & Kolk, H. H. (1996). One or more labels on the bottles? Notional concord in Dutch and
    French. Language and Cognitive Processes, 11, 407–442. doi:10.1080/016909696387169
    Wagers, M. W., Lau, E. F., & Phillips, C. (2009). Agreement attraction in comprehension: Representations and processes. Journal
    of Memory and Language, 61, 206–237. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2009.04.002
    37
    References
    

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38. Conceptual and Grammatical Plurality of Conjoined
    NPs in L2 Sentence Comprehension
    contact info Yu Tamura
    Graduate School, Nagoya University
    yutamura@nagoya-u.jp
    http://www.tamurayu.wordpress.com/
    38
    0
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    father is/are in New York
    RT(ms)
    sg
    pl
    • Conceptual Plurality ̋
    • Grammatical Plurality ☓
    

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