Error-Driven Retrieval in Agreement Attraction Rarely Leads to Misinterpretation.

ABSTRACT: Previous work on agreement computation in sentence comprehension motivates a model in which the parser predicts the verb's number and engages in retrieval of the agreement controller only when it detects a mismatch between the prediction and the bottom-up input. It is the error-driven second stage of this process that is prone to similarity-based interference and can result in the illusory licensing of a subject-verb number agreement violation in the presence of a structurally irrelevant noun matching the number marking on the verb ('The bed by the lamps were…'), giving rise to an effect known as 'agreement attraction'. Here we ask to what extent the error-driven retrieval process underlying the illusory licensing alters the structural and thematic representation of the sentence. We

SUBMITTER: Schlueter Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6524724 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature