The resolution of number conflicts in English and German agreement patterns

Abstract

This paper examines the strategies native speakers of American English and German employ in resolving number conflicts in subject-verb agreement. These conflicts are created by the competition of syntactic and semantic principles. Significant differences are found between the two groups of subjects. The English speakers tend to follow the semantic principle in certain lexical items and in N(sg) of NP(pl) constructions but the syntactic principle in sentences with subject complements, in clefts, and, to a lesser extent, in pseudoclefts. The German speakers do almost exactly the reverse. These inconsistencies notwithstanding, semantic arguments are claimed to prevail in English and syntactic arguments in German agreement decisions. The cross-linguistic differences may be put down to the fact that the morphology and the word-ordering component are impoverished in English but not in German. This weakens the syntactic force in the former though not in the latter language. The semanticity of English and the syntacticity of German appear to extend beyond the realm of agreement. Evidence from other areas provides preliminary support for the hypothesis that the semantic slant is a more general characteristic of English and the syntactic slant a more general characteristic of German