A few sample research designs

A few sample research designs

Heidi LorimorLing 225

‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day”, 2007

A good research project must be:

Concise Testable Controlled Grounded in research, testing a prediction

made by other studies An “alternative” hypothesis – expect to see a

difference between two groups Approved by the IRB!

3 Research Studies

Russian Agreement Attraction English Conjunct Agreement & Duration

Analysis Arabic-English Heritage Speakers

Russian Agreement

“The format for the editing commands are: [address1[,address2]][function][arguments] where the addresses are optional and can be separated from the function by spaces or tabs.” Introduction to Unix textbook. Fiamingo et al., (1998)

“…the scheduling of these holidays are subject to departmental approval.” University of Illinois Calendar, 2004

“Minority ownership of businesses are up.” George W. Bush in 3rd presidential debate, 10/13/04

Russian Agreement

Subject-Verb Agreement

Normal: Subject HEAD noun agrees in number with the verbThe professor with the excellent students studies in the library

Attraction: Plural marker from LOCAL noun (interloper) agrees in number with the verb The professor with the excellent students study in the library

Russian Agreement

Does morphological case play a role in how often attraction occurs? Agreement and structural Case are “two sides of the

same coin” (Boeckx, 2004; see also Chomsky, 1999:35)

Morphological case reduces the rate of attraction in Dutch and German for non-homophonous case endings (Hartsuiker, Schriefers, Bock, and Kikstra, 2004)

Expect to see reduction in attraction when overt morphology signals a distinction between subjects and non-subjects

Russian Agreement

128 participants All native Russian speakers

Recent immigrants taking English classes at a community center in Chicago or

Affiliated with the University of Illinois

2 Procedures Sentence Completion Task, n=96 (Bock & Miller, 1991)

Modified Sentence Completion Task, n=32 (Vigliocco et al.’s (1995) Design, Exp. 2)

Russian Agreement

Procedure: Hear preamble Repeat preamble and complete sentence Experimenter advances tape to next trial

Example Trial

Hear: “The picture in the magazines” Respond: “The picture in the magazines is

pretty”

Modified Completion Task

Same procedure as sentence completion task, except… Provided unmarked verb or adjective Then played preamble Participants repeated preamble and completed

the sentence, using the word provided

Materials 32 experimental items & 64 fillers

4 versions of each experimental item SS билет на концерт ‘ticket to the concert’ SP билет на концерты ‘ticket to the concerts’ PS билеты на концерт ‘tickets to the concert’ PP билеты на концерты ‘tickets to the concerts’

Same fillers for each list. Items balanced for gender in each group:

MM 8 masculine head – masculine local MF 8 masculine head – feminine local FM 8 feminine head – masculine local FF 8 feminine head – feminine local

Crossed Number x Gender: 2 of each possible combination

Russian Agreement

Coded for: Singular Verb/Adjective Plural Verb/Adjective Unmarked for number Miscellaneous response

Russian Agreement

4091 Scorable responses (72% marked as Singular or Plural)

Proportion Plural

Responses

SS (ticket to the concert) .03%

SP (ticket to the concerts) 5.5%*

PS (tickets to the concert) 97.7%

PP (tickets to the concerts) 98.6% * = significant at p < .05

Russian Agreement

Effect of Nominative-Case-homophonous local nouns on verb agreement in the singular-plural condition

4.1%

9.5%

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

Non-homophonous Homophonous

Local noun type

Pe

rce

nta

ge

plu

ral

res

po

ns

es

“defekt v mashinakh”

defect in cars

“bilet na konserty”

ticket to concerts

Russian Agreement

Agreement attraction seems to occur less often in case-marking languages: (Bock, Carreiras, Meseguer, & Octigan, 2004; Hartsuiker, Schriefers, Bock, & Kikstra, 2003, Exp. 1; Vigliocco,

Butterworth & Garrett, 1996)

% SP attraction

Russian 5.5%

German 3.1%

Spanish 11.5%

English 11.0%

Possible Explanations:

• Feedback account: homophonous plural marker increases plural agreement (Dell, 1986; Stemberger, 1985)

• Monitoring account: potential attractors are eliminated via cues of morphological case (Levelt, 1983, 1989)

Russian Agreement

Are agreement patterns influenced by notional number? In English and Spanish, notional plurality

increases rate of plural agreement about 10% (Bock et al., 2004)

If notional agreement effects are instances of semantics overriding grammatical agreement processes, expect increased plural agreement with notionally plural subjects even when morphological cues reduce the rate of attraction

Russian Agreement

Distributivity Effects on Notional NumberIs this one thing or many things?

A few preambles – translated:

Non-Distributive---------------------------------Distributive

The

boss

of t

he

man

icuris

tsTh

e ne

ighb

or o

f the

mus

ician

s

The

dang

er in

the

citie

s The

requ

est o

f

the

mot

hers

The

illust

ratio

n in

the

book

s

The

defe

ct in

the

cars

Russian Agreement

Total SP plurals: 8(non-dist) and 31(distributive)

Effect of distributivity on verb agreement

0.4% 0.5%3.1%

9.7%

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

non-distributive distributive

Distributivity of subject noun phrase

Per

centa

ge

plu

ral r

esponse

s

singular-plural

singular-singular

*

Russian Agreement

Attraction does occur in Russian Significant effect of plural attraction Overt case-marking reduces the rate of attraction

However… Notional agreement still occurs, and plural

agreement can arise because of notional plurality

3 Research Studies



English Conjunct Agreement

Can meaning intervene and influence syntax? The family of rats is living in my garage. 5 dollars are all you need. Bacon and eggs are on the table. Reading and writing are important for a child’s

success.


Can meaning intervene and influence syntax? The family of rats is living in my garage. The family of rats are living in my garage. 5 dollars are all you need. 5 dollars is all you need. Bacon and eggs are on the table. Bacon and eggs is on the table. Reading and writing are important for a child’s

success. Reading and writing is important for a child’s success.


Noun + Noun = ? What are the agreement properties of conjoined

noun phrases? Are conjunctions always plural? If there is variability, is it semantically conditioned?


Conjunct type Examples from World Wide Web

simple count The month and day that a health benefits plan first goes into effect becomes its anniversary date… (www.cigna.com)

simple mass Any principal and interest on the notes is payable… (www.news.moneycentral.msn.com)

deverbal Selecting and double-clicking on the entry within the alarm log launches…

(www.cisco.com)


Verb Elicitation Procedure

Play the beginning of a sentence Hear: “The milk and cheese”

Participant repeats sentence beginning and finishes the sentence, telling us “where things are” Say: “The milk and cheese were on the table” (Elicits verb: was, were, is, are)



Four types of experimental preambles: Simple Count “the name and address” Simple Mass “the tea and coffee” Deverbal Count “the operation and recovery” Deverbal Mass “the singing and dancing”

Prediction: Abstract and less enumerable noun phrases should “coalesce”, creating

noun phrases that are notionally singular, and producing singular verbs

More abstract Less Abstract

Deverbal Mass & Count Simple Mass Simple Count



Four types of experimental preambles: Simple Count “the name and address” Simple Mass “the tea and coffee” Deverbal Count “the operation and recovery” Deverbal Mass “the singing and dancing”

Controls: Syllable Length balanced across all lists Orders reversed for each item and for whole list Constrained instruction set: “tell us where things are” – provides

highly uniform responses, but still “natural” production


tea

and

co

ffee

dis

k an

d h

ard

cop

y

mu

seu

m a

nd

ch

urc

h

read

ing

an

d w

riti

ng

op

erat

ion

an

d r

eco

very

Proportion Singular Verbs by ConjunctType (Sentence Completion Task)

0.69

0.64

0.42

0.19

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

deverbal mass deverbal count simple mass simple count

Conjunct type

sin

gu

lar

verb

pro

po

rtio

n

dm: “the singing and dancing” dc: “the operation and recovery” sm: “the tea and coffee” sc:“the name and address”


Meaning matters Conjunctions don’t have to be plural; speakers

can optionally view them as becoming one entity, and therefore employ singular agreement

Abstract, non-enumerable nouns are more likely to undergo coalescence, demonstrating semantic influences on syntactic production


If “coalescence” is responsible for singular agreement, we might be able to see a prosodic correlate

If "(X and Y) is" is a single unit Expect to see less of a pause after X Perhaps a longer pause after the conjunction to create

prosodic unit? "(X) and (Y) are" is built of two units

Expect to see a greater pause after X

3 Research Studies



Arabic-English Heritage Speakers

Hypothesis: Heritage speakers will have predictable gaps in their grammars that…

Participants: Egyptian and Jordanian Heritage Speakers, and control groups of native speakers

Materials... Procedure…

A few sample research designs

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