Utku invited to Chicago Syntax Workshop

Planning agreement in unaccusative versus unergative clauses.

Friday January 16 Utku Turk gives an invited presentation of his work to the Morphology and Syntax Workshop at the University of Chicago Department of Linguistics. The presentation, titled "Evidence (inshallah) from sentence planning for late-insertion models of grammar," asks whether verb-agreement is planned differently in the production of unaccusative clauses, as opposed to unergatives, in light Shota Momma's claim that the verb is planned earlier in the former. The main measure is the rate of agreement errors - and here the studies find comparable rates, suggesting no difference in the planning of agreement. Another factor did differ, however: "onset latencies showed [that] modifier noun number affected early planning only with unaccusatives."  

Evidence (inshallah) from sentence planning for late-insertion models of grammar

This talk examines when verbal agreement is planned by analyzing agreement errors across unaccusative and unergative verbs. Building on work showing that unaccusative verbs are planned before utterance onset while unergatives are planned incrementally (Momma & Ferreira, 2019), we ask: if agreement is planned early with the verb, should unaccusatives show fewer errors? Two picture description experiments (N=74, N=59) revealed comparable error rates across verb types, suggesting late agreement planning. However, onset latencies showed modifier noun number affected early planning only with unaccusatives, indicating additional number-related processing when verbs are planned early.