Reaching agreement

• Published in: Natural language and linguistic theory Vol. 29; no. 4; pp. 1033 - 1069
• Main Authors: Bock, Kathryn, Middleton, Erica L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.11.2011; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agreement; Cognition & reasoning; Communication; Grammar; Grammatical agreement; Grammatical gender; Grammatical number; Inflection (Morphology); Language; Language Processing; Language use; Linguistic agreement; Linguistics; Memory; Memory recall; Natural Language Processing (NLP); Noun phrases; Nouns; Number; Phi features; Philosophy of Language; Pronouns; Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Social Sciences; Syntax; Syntax Semantics Relationship; Theoretical linguistics; Topic and comment; Verbs; Psycholinguistics; Agreement attraction; Language production; Number agreement
• ISSN: 0167-806X; 1573-0859
• DOI: 10.1007/s11049-011-9148-y

In addition to the major linguistic components of language use, theories of language production must explain how utterances grow out of communicative intentions. In ordinary circumstances, utterances are rooted in meanings. The question addressed in this paper is whether the mechanisms of a core syntactic process, number agreement, depend in any important way on the conceptual underpinnings of number. We critically examine research that points to a role for number semantics in the agreement process, and consider alternative psycholinguistic accounts of agreement in the context of issues about how number meaning infiltrates or informs the structural components of language production.