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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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]

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)

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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. __
____ __ ___ __ ___ _____ __ _____ ___ 次へ

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

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

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

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

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

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

24. Reading Time Differences
24
Results
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
father is/are in New York
RT(ms)
sg
pl

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

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

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 <.001 91.73 43.11
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

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 <.001 63.30 31.94
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

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 <.001 53.88 22.49
c.letters 25.88 7.08 3.66 <.001 — —
Condition 26.06 18.75 1.39 .16 63.72 —
Table 4.
The Results of GLMM in Region 6

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 <.001 60.61 31.34
c.letters 30.63 8.09 3.79 <.001 — —
Condition 26.77 21.96 1.22 .22 77.49 —
Table 5.
The Results of GLMM in Region 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
father is/are in New York
RT(ms)
sg
pl
• Conceptual Plurality ⃝
• Grammatical Plurality ☓