Case Marking

For number marking, ambiguity or regularity affects the vulnerability of the con-troller but not the efficiency of the distractor; for case marking, the literature re-ports the opposite trend. Although attraction errors in German mainly occur with feminine and thus case ambiguous subjects, the vulnerability of feminine NPs to attraction seems to be due to the number ambiguous determiner die. This con-clusion was based on the absence of attraction with neuter NPs sharing the case ambiguity but having a number marked determiner. Case ambiguity of the dis-tractor, in contrast, strongly affects the likelihood of an attraction error, both for modifier attraction (Hartsuiker et al., 2003; Lorimor et al., 2008; Nicol and Antón-Méndez, 2006; Nicol and Wilson, 2000) and for object attraction (Hartsuiker et al., 2001). A case morphology that excludes the possibility that the distractor could be the subject and therefore the controller of agreement apparently reduces or even prevents attraction. Before accepting this conclusion we should examine some potential objections.

Consider first modifier attraction in German which is more frequent with sub-jects modified by an accusative NP compared to dative modifiers (Schriefers and

15Surprisingly, Haskell and MacDonald (2003) found higher mean plurality ratings for nouns with regular plural morphology in comparison to irregular plural nouns.

van Kampen, 1993; Hartsuiker et al., 2003). In these studies, the dative-versus-accusative distinction correlated with ambiguity of case marking: Accusative NPs were case ambiguous while dative NPs were unambiguous. Therefore, the dif-ference in the incidence of attraction has been taken as evidence for an impact of case ambiguity on attraction. Two complications hamper this conclusion. First, case ambiguity and number ambiguity interact in German. As explained earlier in the discussion of number marking, the German determiner die is four-way am-biguous: feminine singular nominative or accusative and plural nominative or accusative. Thus, an accusative plural distractor has always a number ambigu-ous determiner, an accusative singular distractor contains a number ambiguambigu-ous determiner when being feminine or masculine and a number unambiguous deter-miner for neuter gender. For dative case, the plural deterdeter-miner den is also number ambiguous but in interaction with case: den can be either accusative singular mas-culine or dative plural. In most cases, the preceding preposition solved the case ambiguity and thereby also the number ambiguity in dative NPs but not in ac-cusative NPs. There are two arguments why this confound is no problem for the conclusion that case ambiguity affects attraction. First, while ambiguity of subject number marking (either on the determiner or the head noun) has been shown to affect the incidence of attraction, we have only little evidence that ambiguity of distractor number marking plays a role (see discussion above). Second, even if ambiguity of number marking affects attraction we would expect that a number ambiguous distractor is less effective. The experimental results, in contrast, show the opposite. Attraction is more common with accusative distractors, i.e. with distractor containing a number ambiguous determiner.

The second complication arises from the need to use different prepositions in order to manipulate case. As a result, the semantic relation between controller and distractors varies. Consider the example in (37) taken from Schriefers and van Kampen (1993).

‘the reference to the file(s) b. Der

‘the reference in the file(s)

The preposition in the accusative PP (37a) is the same as subcategorized for the verb hinweisen (‘to refer to’, ‘to point out’) suggesting a close semantic relation between controller noun and modifier PP. The dative NP, in contrast, contains a preposition that is less tightly connected to the controller noun. Since Solomon and Pearlmutter (2004) have shown that semantic integration affects the likelihood

of attraction, this confound of case and semantic relation might be a problem. An inspection of the material used in Hartsuiker et al. (2003), however, shows that the subcategorized and free prepositions are more or less equally distributed over accusative and dative case.

Turn next to Russian for which Lorimor et al. (2008) report higher attraction rates for case ambiguous modifiers.¹⁶ Again, case ambiguity correlates with an-other factor, this time animacy. And again, there is evidence that this confounding factor affects the likelihood of attraction (Bock and Miller, 1991). In Russian, animate nouns have distinct forms in the nominative and accusative case, while inanimate nouns usually have identical forms.¹⁷. Note that animacy and case am-biguity work against each other. Animate distractors which are more likely to elicit an agreement error than inanimate distractors (Bock and Miller, 1991) are unambiguous with respect to case. Case ambiguous nouns in turn for which in-duced most attraction errors in Lorimor et al. (2008) are inanimate. We can there-fore conclude that case ambiguity facilitates attraction.

Research investigating the role of case ambiguity in English compared pronom-inal and non-pronompronom-inal distractors. Nicol and Antón-Méndez (2006) report fewer attraction errors for preambles like the bill from them in comparison to the bill from the accountants. Given that pronouns are morphologically marked for case while full NPs are case ambiguous, this finding suggests that case marking is a determinant for attraction. Supporting evidence for this conclusion comes from a parallel study in Russian showing identical attraction rates for pronouns and full NPs (Nicol and Wilson, 2000). Russian marks both nouns and pronouns for case (see the example below). Therefore, the noun/pronoun difference in English can be safely attributed to an impact of case marking.

(38) a. Sˇcet

‘the bill from the accountant(s)’

b. Sˇcet

In summary, there is converging evidence that case marking plays a crucial for modifier attraction. Hartsuiker et al. (2001) found similar effects of case ambigu-ity for object attraction. Objects which are unambiguously marked for case are

16Note that case ambiguity was not an independent factor in this study. From the 32 preambles in the material of Lorimor et al. (2008) only six items contained a case ambiguous distractor. But for these six items, the attraction rates were clearly higher than for the rest of the sentences.

17In the plural, the accusative form of an inanimate noun is always identical to the nominative case. In the singular, most inanimate nouns (except some mainly feminine nouns in the singular like kartina (‘picture’)) have identical forms in the according cells of their paradigms.

less likely to interfere in processing of subject–verb agreement. Taking number marking and case marking together we see that both play a role but in different ways. The realization of number is important for the controller because it affects its vulnerability to attraction. Case marking, on the other hand, is crucial for the distractor because it affects its likelihood to cause attraction.

3.4 Modeling the Computation of Agreement