Linear Proximity versus Syntactic Structure

Attraction is also known under the label of proximity concord (error) (e.g., Fran-cis, 1986; Quirk et al., 1985). Quirk et al. (1985: 757), for example, define prox-imity concord as "agreement of the verb with a closely preceding noun phrase in preference to agreement with the head of the noun phrase that functions as a subject". The notion of proximity concord suggests that attraction is a superficial phenomenon not sensitive to hierarchical syntactic structure. Given that in the examples discussed so far, the distractor always immediately preceded the verb, the impression might arise that linear proximity is the driving force for attraction.

But there is an increasing bulk of evidence against such a linear proximity view.

First, adjacency of distractor and verb is not necessary for attraction as evidenced by non-intervening attraction, e.g., in sentences with subject-auxiliary inversion Vigliocco and Nicol (1998) or with a distractor preceding the controller (Bock and Miller, 1991; Staub, 2009). Second, adjacency of distractor and verb is not sufficient as demonstrated by lower attraction rates when the distractor is part of a modifier clause in comparison to a PP-modifier despite still being adjacent to the verb (the advisor who directed the students versus the advisor of the chemistry students) (Bock and Cutting, 1992; Solomon and Pearlmutter, 2004). Third, at-traction is sensitive to the position of the distractor relative to the controller (Bock and Cutting, 1992; Nicol, 1995; Franck et al., 2002).

Consider first sentences involving subject-auxiliary inversion. Vigliocco and Nicol (1998) presented their participants preambles like the helicopter for the flights and instructed them to produce either a declarative sentence or an inter-rogative sentence. In the later case, participants had to produce the verb before the subject NP. As a result, the distractor does not only follow the verb but it is lin-early also more distant to the verb than the controller noun. The syntactic position of the distractor, however, is not affected by subject-auxiliary inversion.

(20) a. The helicopter for theFLIGHTS is/*are safe.

b. Is/*are the helicopter for theFLIGHTSsafe?

Vigliocco and Nicol (1998) found similar attraction rates for declarative sentences like (20a) and interrogatives sentences like (20b). This finding suggests that the computation of agreement operates on a syntactic representation instead of a linear string and applies before fronting the auxiliary. The results of Vigliocco and Nicol (1998) contrast with the results of Franck et al. (2006) who found significantly less attraction in inverted structures in Italian.

(21) a. L’

‘The friend of the neighbors will call.’

Nevertheless, both results as well as the difference between the studies indi-cate that the syntactic structure plays a crucial role for attraction. Note that the sentence-initial position of the verb is reached differently in the two languages or constructions, respectively. In English interrogative sentence, an inverted struc-ture is reached by movement of the verb to the left (I-to-C movement). Romance free inversion, in contrast, is assumed to result from leaving the subject in a po-sition below the verb. For a detailed discussion of the structural differences and their consequences for the computation of agreement see Franck et al. (2006).

Let us now turn to a second type of non-intervening attraction occurring with relative clauses. As already shown in the first experimental investigation of num-ber attraction (Bock and Miller, 1991), attraction even occurs when the distractor precedes the controller and thus does not linearly intervene between controller and verb. Whether or not the distractor syntactically intervenes depends on the partic-ular syntactic assumptions one makes (for discussion see Franck et al., 2006 and section 5.2.1 in chapter 5). Bock and Miller presented their participants preambles like (22) that required two verbs—one for the object-extracted relative clause and another one for the main clause.

(22) The songs that the composer

The majority of agreement errors occurred when relative-clause head noun and relative-clause subject did not match in number. In sentences with a number match, agreement errors were virtually absent for the relative-clause verb and comparatively rare for the main verb. In general, participants produced more agreement errors for the main verb (5.5%) than for the embedded verb (1.8%).

But let us concentrate on the embedded verb. In this case, the relative-clause head noun is the distractor while the relative-clause subject is the controller for agreement. Agreement errors were more common with a plural distractor repli-cating the singular–plural asymmetry discussed in section 3.3.1. Bock and Miller suggested that attraction errors in this configuration results from a difficulty to identify the subject. This would be in line with the general processing difficulty observed for object-extracted relative clauses in comparison to subject-extracted relative clauses (for English e.g., Bever, 1970; Ford, 1983; King and Kutas, 1995;

King and Just, 1991; Wanner and Maratsos, 1978; for German see Schriefers et al., 1995; Mecklinger et al., 1995). Supporting evidence for failure of correct subject identification comes from the inspection of the content of the continua-tions produced by the participants. In some cases, the completion suggests that the speaker treated the relative-clause head noun as the subject of the embedded clause. Evaluation of the content was facilitated by the animacy properties of the two nouns. In half of the preambles the relative-clause head noun was animate while the relative-clause subject was inanimate, in the other half the distribution was the opposite. The attraction rate was higher in the first constellation, i.e. with an animate distractor. Given the prominence of animacy for various grammatical phenomena including agreement (Corbett, 2006)¹⁰this is not an unexpected result in a scenario where actual controller and distractor compete for subjecthood. The animate distractor constitutes a better subject than the inanimate controller. What remains unexplained under this perspective is the singular–plural asymmetry.

Response times might serve as a test for the subject identification hypothe-sis, as Staub (2009) argues. His rationale is as follows: False responses resulting from attraction are slowed down in comparison to correct responses and reflect the speaker’s confusion about the identity of the subject. Correct responses are expected to show virtually no attraction penalty, i.e. no slow down in the mis-match condition compared to the corresponding mis-match condition. Apparently, Staub assumes that confusion necessarily results in an error, otherwise response

10This prominence is captured in the Animacy Hierarchy and its extension, the Person Hierar-chy (e.g., Comrie, 1989; Croft, 2003; Siewierska, 1993). The hierarHierar-chy is justified by a variety of grammatical phenomena such as number marking (Corbett, 2000), word order (Croft, 2003;

Siewierska, 1993), object marking (known under the label of ‘differential object marking’, cf.

Aissen, 2003; Bossong, 1985, 1991) and just as well agreement (Corbett, 2006).

times for correct responses should show an attraction penalty too—due to the effort to ignore the interference arising from the distractor. Staub presents an ex-periment that involved the classical attraction configuration in (23a) as well as the non-intervening configuration in (23b).

(23) a. The key to theCABINET(S) b. TheCABINET(S) that the key

The experiment revealed comparable attraction rates in terms of accuracy, but showed a considerable difference in the response time patterns. The intervening configuration showed an attraction penalty, whereas the non-intervening configu-ration exhibited a reversed pattern—longer response times in the match condition compared to the mismatch condition. Although non-intervening attraction showed an attraction penalty, it was much less pronounced than for intervening attraction.

In summary, these results suggest two conclusions: First, intervening attraction and non-intervening attraction (at least in the particular construction used in the experiment) result from different sources. Second, the response time pattern is compatible with Bock and Miller’s (1991) assumption that the speaker struggles with the task of subject identification.

A further piece against the linear proximity hypothesis comes from experi-ments keeping the linear position of the distractor constant but varying its syn-tactic position. If adjacency (or at least close precedence) of distractor and verb would be the main determinant of attraction, we would expect comparable attrac-tion rates for sentence preambles like (24a) and (24b). Although the syntactic position of the distractor differs in (24a) and (24b) the linear distance between distractor and verb is identical. For both preambles, the verb has to be produced immediately after the distractor students.

(24) a. The advisor [for the chemistrySTUDENTS] b. The advisor [who directed theSTUDENTS]

Comparing sentence completions after preambles like (24), Bock and Cutting (1992) found more attraction errors for sentence preambles like (24a) than for preambles like (24b). Similar results were already reported in Bock and Miller (1991) but modifier type was varied between, rather than within, items in those experiments. In addition to relative clauses, Bock and Cutting (1992) examined complement clauses in comparison to prepositional phrases as in the example pro-vided below. Again, the attraction rate was higher in sentences with a PP-modifier.

(25) a. The message [from the excitedSTUDENTS] b. The message [that they expelled theSTUDENTS]

Note that in (24a) and (25a) the distractor students is a clause mate of the con-troller, i.e. it is part of a prepositional phrase modifying the concon-troller, whereas it is the object of a separate clause in (24b) and (25b). Given that subject–verb agree-ment is clausebound (for exceptions see the literature on long-distance agreeagree-ment, e.g., Polinsky, 2003), attraction might be more likely within the current clause.

And indeed, attraction rates are higher in sentences like (24a)/(25a) than in sen-tences like (24b) and (25b) suggesting that a noun contained in a PP-modifier is a stronger distractor than a noun contained in a separate clause (Bock and Cutting, 1992; Solomon and Pearlmutter, 2004).

As Bock (1991) argues, a major challenge for language production is the need to process structurally similar elements as part of the same encoding unit which gives way to interference. Under this perspective together with the assumption that the clause is the basic encoding unit (cf. Ferreira and Engelhardt, 2006, and references therein), attraction results from the simultaneous processing of con-troller and distractor when both are clause mates. Bock and Cutting (1992) take this as evidence for a relative—although not complete—informational encapsula-tion of clauses.