Tamura, Y., Fukuta, J., Nishimura, Y., & Kato, D. (2015). Coordinated NPs agree with singular or plural in there-constructions?: A comparison between NS and NNS in a self-paced reading task. Poster presented at the 17th Annual International Conference of the Japan Society for Language Sciences. Oita, Japan.

1. Coordinated NPs agree with singular or plural in there-constructions?
A Comparison between NS and NNS in a self-paced reading task
Yu Tamura (Graduate School, Nagoya University)
Junya Fukuta (Graduate School, Nagoya University / The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
Yoshito Nishimura (Graduate School, Nagoya University)
Daiki Kato(Graduate School, Nagoya University)
1. Introduction
Purpose: Investigating Japanese EFL learners’ online
sentence processing of subject-verb agreement (SVA) in
the case of existential there-constructions.
Background: How does SVA occur?
(1a) A pen and an eraser are on my desk.
(1b) *A pen and an eraser is on my desk.
(2a) There is a pen and an eraser on my desk.
(2b) ?There are a pen and an eraser on my desk.
※NS prefer (2a) to (2b) (Sobin, 1997)
2. The Present Study
Self-paced reading task (moving window)
Patrticipants: 32 NNS (TOEIC: M =462.7) and 8 NS
Stimuli: 8 pairs (G and UG) of target sentences
There | is/are | a | pen | and | an | eraser | on | the |desk.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Analysis: nonparametric bootstrapping (10,000 times)
and comparison of mean differences using Cohen’s d
(M+/- 2SD was removed from the analysis)
3. Results
Table 1. Mean RTs (in ms) and SDs (in parentheses)
References
O’Grady, W. (2005). Syntactic carpentry: A emergentist approach to syntax. Routledge.
Sobin, N. (1997). Agreement, default rules, and grammatical viruses. Linguistic Inquiry, 28, 318–343.
Tamura, Y., Fukuta, J., Nishimura, Y., & Kusanagi, K. (2014). Japanese EFL learners implicit/explicit knowledge of subject-verb
agreement in existential there: A self-paced reading study. Paper presented at The 20th JABAET Conference, Housei Univ, Japan.
Figure 1. 95% bootstrapped confidence intervals of Cohen’s d
is/are a pen and an eraser
NNS
sig
453
(103)
419
(111)
623
(305)
546
(120)
412
(86)
553
(153)
pl
465
(104)
446
(135)
653
(240)
502
(101)
427
(84)
570
(144)
NS
sig
319
(61)
320
(61)
310
(58)
310
(63)
298
(63)
298
(69)
pl
322
(68)
339
(60)
329
(63)
326
(72)
309
(66)
321
(66)
4. Discussion and Conclusion
• NNS might reanalyse NP as plural when they encountered and. -> NNS processed coordinated NP as plural
With the help of explicit knowledge about and?(e.g., Tamura et al., 2014)
• NS might not resolve agreement errors as NNS did. -> NS made SVA at the nearest NP.
Emergentist account may explain this tendency?(e.g., O’Grady, 2005)
Figure 2. Mean RT profile for NS and NNS
July 19, 2015 The 17th Annual International Conference of the Japan Society for Language Sciences