Agreement Processing in Control and Raising Structures. Evidence from Sentence Production in Spanish

SÁNCHEZ, MARIA ELINA; SEVILLA, YAMILA; BACHRACH, ASAF

Buenos Aires

Workshop; Workshop de la I Escuela de Lingüística de Buenos Aires (ELBA 2016); 2016

Museo del Libro y de la Lengua

We report the results of a study investigating the production of gender and number agreement between head noun and predicativeadjective in Spanish using an elicited-error paradigm with preambles that included either Control or Raising verbs. In order to identify if thesubjects of the infinitivals selected by these two verb types are syntactically identical (Movement Theory of Control) or distinct (Theory ofControl by PRO or anaphora), the following features in the preambles were manipulated: gender of head noun (Feminine--Masculine),gender and number (Singular--Plural) of local noun, and type of verb (Control--Raising).Weanalyzed the agreement errors and omissionspatterns, as well as response times in the production of the target adjective. The error rate was not different across the two syntacticconditions, but the two verb classes were associated with significantly different number of target omissions. Furthermore, omissions in theControl condition were specifically associated with feminine agreeing adjectives. This pattern was also reflected in the adjectiveproduction latency. Taken together, these results undermine the Control by Movement explanation and argue for a Control by PROanalysis of Control constructions.