Being a Participant Matters: Event-Related Potentials Show That Markedness Modulates Person Agreement in Spanish.

ABSTRACT: The present study uses event-related potentials to examine subject-verb person agreement in Spanish, with a focus on how markedness with respect to the speech participant status of the subject modulates processing. Morphological theory proposes a markedness distinction between first and second person, on the one hand, and third person on the other. The claim is that both the first and second persons are participants in the speech act, since they play the speaker and addressee roles, respectively. In contrast, third person refers to whomever is neither the speaker nor the addressee (i.e., it is unmarked for person). We manipulated speech participant by probing person agreement with both first-person singular subjects (e.g., yo…lloro "I…cry-_1ST

SUBMITTER: Aleman Banon J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6491576 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature