Download The resolution of number conflicts in English and German

The resolution of number conflicts in English
and German agreement patterns*
THOMAS BERG
Abstract
This paper examines the strategies native speakers of American English
and German employ in resolving number eonfliets in subject-verb agreement.
Tliese 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
svntaetie prineiple in sentenees )vith subfeet complements, in clefts, and, to
a lesser extent, in pseudoelefts. The German speakers do almost exaetiv
the reverse. These ineonsistencies notwithstanding, semantic arguments are
claimed to prevail in English and syntactic arguments in German agreement
deeisions. The eross-linguistie differenees 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
syntacticitv 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
svntaetie slant a more general eharaeteristie of German.
1.
Introduction
One of the most remarkable properties of agreement is its sensitivity to
a variety of influences, ranging from semantic, pragmatic, syntactic,
lexical, and morphophonological factors to sociolinguistic variables (e.g.
age and sex) and even apparently nonsystematic effects such as idiosyncratic strategies employed by individual speakers. This multiple sensitivity
would be no problem if the different influences had different domains of
application or if a strict rank order could be established among them. In
Linguistics 36 (1998), 41 -70
0024 3949/98/00360041
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Thomas Berg
both these cases, there would be a clear-cut segregation of the various
influences and hence no competition among them. However, natural
languages do not necessarily follow this design. There are intriguing cases
of conflict where different principles favor different agreement patterns
and give rise to uncertainty in language use. Perhaps the best known of
these cases in English is the conflict created by the clash of semantic and
syntactic forces (e.g. Perlmutter 1972; Morgan 1984; see also Givon
1970). The alternatives in (1) lead us into the problem.
1I)
a.
b.
The family is celebrating reunion at Christmas,
The family are celebrating reunion at Christmas
A typical case of agreement is illustrated in (la). The subject noun family
is morphologically and syntactically singular (thisI*these family) and
accordingly takes a singular verb form (is). In British more than in
American English, collective nouns may also be followed by a plural
verb, an option that is claimed to be "very much alive" (Fries 1988).
The motivation for treating/fl/»//v as a plural noun in (la) is a semantic
one. While /«////•/!' is construed as a group in (la), the individual members
are profiled in (Ib).
The converse of (1) is exemplified in (2). These sentences are taken
from Reid (1991: 224), who excerpted them from the same small-town
newspaper article.
(2)
a.
b.
the major religious concerns in this city are youth, senior
citizens and housing,
the major concerns of parents is drug and alcohol abuse
by students.
Here, the subject noun coneerns is morphologically and syntactically
plural (*this/these concerns) and combines with a plural verb in (2a) but
a singular verb in (2b). According to Reid (1991), the choice of verh
number is semantically driven. The eoneerns in (2b) are more homogeneous than in (2a). The idea of a uniform set of concerns induces the
singular morphology on the verb in (2b).' These examples show that the
overt plural marker on the noun may be ignored in the agreement process
(Moravcsik 1978). It transpires from both (1) and (2) that semantic
considerations may override morphosyntactic constraints.
As all four possible combinations of word class (noun, verb) and
number (singular, plural) are attested, a certain independence between
noun and verb number cannot be denied. Reid infers from this that the
agreement (or disagreement) in number of nouns and verbs is not syntactically determined at all but a purely semantic phenomenon (for a similar
view, see Dowty and Jacobson 1988). This absolutist stance is open to
The resolution of number confiiets in English and German 43
criticism. It would predict that collective nouns in the singular (e.g. fleet)
trigger plurality on the verb more frequently than do individual nouns
(e.g. ship) because the former carry a plural meaning whereas the latter
do not. This prediction was subjected to an experimental test by Bock
and Eberhard (1993). They capitahzed upon the previously estabhshed
fact that speakers are prone to make the verb agree in number with the
postmodifying noun rather than the head noun in complex NPs of the
fonn the readiness of our eonventional forees (Zandvoort 1961; Strang
1966; Francis 1986). Bock and Eberhard compared the error-inducing
potential of NPs such as the condition of the fleet (collective, singular),
the condition of the fleets (collective, plural), the condition of the ship
(individual, singular) and the eondition of the ships (individual, plural)
and found that the singular collective noun did not induce plurality on
the following verb in their subjects' responses. Their interpretation of
this result was that verb agreement is not primarily under the influence
of the semantic nature of the noun. Rather, the noun is subcategorized
for requiring a plural or a singular verb (the latter being the default case,
see Eberhard 1997). This lexical information provides the input to the
syntactic agreement rule.
It should be noted that Bock and Eberhard (1993) were prudent
enough not to categorically dismiss the possibility of a semantic influence.
Indeed, Vigliocco, Butterworth, and Semenza (1995) found for Italian,
Vigliocco, Butterworth, and Garrett (1996) for Spanish, and Vigliocco,
Hartsuiker, et al. (1996) for Dutch and Erench what Bock and Miller
(1991) did not find for English. Vigliocco et al. examined the effect of
the preferred reading of the morphologically singular head noun in NPs
consisting of an NP and a PP. In the Italian NP // viaggo verso le isole
'the journey to the islands' the head noun is understood as a single
journey. By contrast, a multiple-token interpretation is favored in
I'etichetta sulk bottiglie 'the label on the bottles' because each bottle
carries a label. Whereas the two types of NP were treated indiscriminately
by Bock and Miller's subjects, notional number influenced the agreement
decisions in the three Vigliocco et al. studies. The least that can be
concluded is that, cross-linguistically speaking, agreement is not immune
to semantic influences.
Turning to the role of syntax, there is ample evidence that agreement
is affected by syntactic constraints (see Osterhout and Mobley [1995] for
a neurophysiological perspective). A particularly compelling case is the
syntactic distance between the controller and the target (Corbett 1979).
The smaller the distance, the stronger the syntactic influence, and vice
versa. When target and controller occupy the same NP, the syntactic
force is strong enough to resist interference from semantic factors, as
44
Thomas Bei\r
shown by the incorrectness of *!hese family. However, as indicated in
(i b), when conlroller and target come from different phrases, the syntactic force may yield to semantic influences.
In addition to syntactic distance, linear distance has been argued to
impact upon agreement (Nicol 1995).' Corbett (1983) notes that the
Slavic languages allow for two basic agreement patterns, the resolved
and the unresolved one, m sentences with conjoined subject NPs. In the
first case, agreement occurs with all nouns. If, however, agreement oeeurs
with only one of the nouns (i.e. the unresolved ease), this noun is generally
the one that stands closer to the verb than the other potential controllers
(see also Steinberg and Caskey 1988).
Although it is often difficult to disentangle semantie and syntaetic
elfeets. their essential independence is hardly in doubt. One of the most
eonvineing arguments for the separation of syntax and semantics is the
speeifieation of number on nouns (compare Hudson 1976:6). All of the
following four eombinations are attested in English: a noun may be
semantieally and syntaetieally singular (e.g. this ship), semantieally and
syntaetically plural (e.g. these apples), semantieally singular but syntaetieally plural (e.g. these seales) and semantieally plural but syntaetieally
singular (e.g. this committee). Thus, syntax is neither reducible to semanties nor semantics to syntax.
The preceding discussion, in particular the complementary relationship
between syntax and semantics in generating agreement patterns, argues
for a view m which syntactic and semantie "modules" are conceptually
distinct but may also interact. Surprisingly perhaps, relatively little is
known about the precise nature of this interaction. Does the strength of
the interactants vary from language to language, from linguistic structure
to linguistic structure, and from speaker to speaker? Apart from syntactie
distance, which factors are responsible for the strength of the interactants?
What is the structure of the linguistic system in which agreement confliets
arise and are resolved? Are the forces acting upon agreement particular
to this area or of a more general nature? It is to these questions that the
present study addresses itself.
2.
Method: materials, procedure, subjects
To investigate the relative strengths of semantie and syntactic factors
from the eross-lmguistic perspective, it is imperative to examine linguistie
struetures that are largely equivalent in different languages and are open
to alternative treatment, depending on whether the semantie or the syntaetie side is foeused on. The languages to be compared are English and
The resolution of number eonflids in English and German 45
German. The fact that, as members of the West Germanic branch, they
are quite closely related might lead us to expect similarities rather than
differences between them. Only potential number conflicts in subject-verb
agreement were subjected to scrutiny. It was decided to cover the larger
part of the territory on which the two languages compare directly. Such
a broad coverage allows one to go beyond the comparison of individual
tokens or types of structures and to assess whether the strength of
semantic and syntactic influences is a function of the linguistic unit under
consideration.
The material that will be tested below falls into eight categories. The
first two involve single lexical items that diverge in their morphosyntactic
and semantic properties. Category 1 comprises words that are morphologically and syntactically singular but semantically plural, as in tlie eouple
- das Ehepaar.^ The opposite situation holds in category 2. The noun is
morphosyntactically plural but semantically singular, as in pancakes Pfannkuehen.'^ In both English and German, it is possible to use these
words in the singular. However, when they refer to a type of dish, they
are pluralized. Clearly, neither the plural meaning of tJie eouple nor the
singular meaning of pancakes is the only possible reading. All that is
claimed is that these interpretations are normally made (see Bock and
Eberhard [1993] for confirmatory evidence) and that the relevant German
and English words do not differ in the mental images that they arouse.
The categories 3 to 8 accommodate units above the single-word level.
Category 3 is the largest of all and contains postmodified NPs of the
kind '-ART (-HADJ) + N(sg) + o/( + ADJ)-FN(pl)" Among them are a
gang of thugs - eine Bande von Rowdvs. An attempt was made to keep
the structures in both languages as similar as possible. While there is
generally no alternative to the of construction in English, German may
either use the equivalent von or omit it, as in ein Stapel von Zeitungen
vs. ein Stapel Zeitungen 'a heap of newspapers'. When both options are
available, the variant with von was selected even if it might sometimes
be styhstically less felicitous. Of course, when the variant with von is
prohibited, a structural divergence between the two languages was
unavoidable. The article was most commonly^ indefinite. Occasionally,
the singular or the plural noun was preceded by an adjective. This
insertion occurred mainly for stylistic reasons and was not expected to
have a major effect on the agreement pattern.
Note that category 3 items were found in previous research to create
a certain number of agreement problems (e.g. Bock and Miller 1991;
Eayol et al. 1994; Vigliocco et al. 1995). The most probable reason for
this is a conflict between the linear-distance and the syntactic-dominance
principles. The syntactic-dominance principle weighs in favor of singular
46
riiomas Berg
agreement because the head of the phrase is singular, while the lineardistance principle argues in favor of plural agreement because the noun
closest to the verb is plural. In a more semantically inspired vein, it might
be claimed that the agreement conflict is caused by difl"erent readings to
which these NPs may give rise. A heap of newspapers may be given the
holistic interpretation of an amorphous mass. Alternatively, the focus
may be on the individual elements that make up this heap.
Coordinate structures are found in category 4. The individual constituents are usually conjoined by and ox or, but the negative case neither
nor is also included. The individual nouns or pronouns are always singular, as in hath he and she - sowohl er als aueh sie.^ The number conflict
therefore arises from the fact that the plural is not overtly expressed but
has to be inferred by adding two singular referents together. Whether
this is automatically done is not a priori clear. In peaee and prosperity Frieden und Wohlstand for example, a compound treatment of both nouns
as a single concept would not be amiss.
Category 5 contains what might be called comparative NPs. There are
two limiting cases in which the boundary between similarity and plurality
is possibly blurred, namely more than one X and fewer than two Xs. Even
though it is clear from the logical point of view that the first NP has a
plural and the second NP a singular meaning, drawing this inference may
be discouraged by the fact that a part of the linguistic structure suggests
the opposite. A singular form appears in more than one X and a plural
form in fewer than two Xs.
The only item in category 6 is many an X. It is unique in that it
combines the plural quantifier many with the singular indefinite article.'
This equivocalness is not, however, reflected at the semantic level. Many
an X undoubtedly has a plural meaning. Unfortunately, its semantic
equivalent in German does not evince this hnguistic equivocalness. Maneh
ein X contains the adjective maneh, which in its uninflected form signals
an upcoming singular noun. There is thus no contradiction in number
between maneh and the following indefinite article ein. Nonetheless, this
item was included in the analysis because a number conflict is also present
m the German translation. Whereas the level of form suggests a singular
interpretation, the whole expression clearly refers to a plural concept in
German as wefl as in English.
Category 7 encompasses NP-copula-NP structures with nominal predicates, that is, in which the complement is in the subject case. In a certain
sense, then, these sentences have two subjects, which may be distinguished
by the labels grammatieal and logical subjeet. When these two subjects
difl^er in number, an agreement conflict is ineluctable. In afl three examples
tested, the grammatical subject is in the singular and the semantic subject
The resolution of number conflicts in English and German 47
in the plural, as in the cause (of the accident) + cop\x\'d (to he) + had brakes
- die Ursachc (fur den UnfaII) +copula (sein) + kaputte Bremsen.
Cleft and pseudocleft sentences form the last category. It is not unlike
category 7 in that it is charaeterized by a eonflict between a grammatical
subject in the singular and a semantic subject in the plural. A typical
case is /r-I-copula + topicalized item-I-relative pronoun, as in it {to be)
the politicians
who
. .-es
(sein) die Folitiker,
die .
While semantically
empty, the dummies // and es have a morphological shape that is open
only to a singular interpretation. When the topicalized item is in the
plural, a number conflict arises.
A pseudocleft sentence is exemplified by What interests me + ito
be) + N{pl) - Was mich interessiert, +(sein)+ N{p\). A special feature of
interrogative pronouns is the explicit singular coding on the verb, ln Who
has vandalized the language lab?, the finite verb form invariably has to
be singular even though it is not necessarily implied that the referent is
singular. This overt morphological marking creates a conflict with the
following noun, which may freely occur in the plural.
One of the major aims of this study was to collect a fair amount of
data on the way that agreement conflicts are resolved by speakers of
English and German. This objective dictated the method to be employed.
In view of the inherent uncertainty about how to resolve agreement
conflicts — the very reason for which the constructions were selected in
the first place — it was immediately obvious that the standard linguistic
methodology of discussing individual examples whose acceptability or
otherwise is judged by the linguist (or grammarian) him/herself is inadequate. It was deemed necessary to dissolve the unity of informant and
analyst and elicit responses from linguistically naive speakers. This can
be done in basically two ways. The subjects may be exposed to alternative
resolutions of agreement conflicts in concrete sentences and asked to
state which option they are happier with (as in Peterson 1986). Such
metalinguistic tasks require subjects to do things that do not form part
of their everyday speaking activities. Moreover, it is not entirely clear
how these decisions are arrived at and which knowledge sources are
involved. In any event, the information tapped by metalinguistic tasks is
how people think they behave (or ought to behave) and this conception
of their behavior may not be identical to the actual behavior. What
makes this problem particularly acute is that the rules that underlie
speakers' behavior are completely unconscious, and therefore the reasons
they decided one way or the other are not easily accessible.
In light of these difliculties, it appeared preferable to have the subjects
produce actual language patterns. Free composition was out of the question because specific items had to be tested. Hence, only an ofl-line
48
Thomas Bci
sentence-completion task was eligible, in which the critical items were
incorporated. The subjects' written responses to these stimuli would
ideally include the desired information. Since the agreement conflicts
have to be resolved on a finite verb, the verb slots were left blank and
ihe subjects were instructed to fill them in. An effort was made to elicit
natural unpremeditated reactions from the subjects in order to get as
close as possible to their ordinary behavior. They were encouraged therefore to react spontaneously.
The subjects' attention was directed to the content of the utterance by
informing them that the task to be performed was about context eflects
upon word selection and asking them to insert words that in their judgment fit the context best. It was hoped that this bias toward content
would make the agreement operations happen without any conscious
elTort on the part of the subjects, much as is the case in real-life speaking
situations. However, it is clear that, whatever the task instructions, the
experimenter never has complete control over the subjects. It cannot
therefore be ruled out that some of the agreement patterns were worked
out after reflection.
To further distract the subjects' attention from the real purpose of the
experiment, the critical items were interspersed with filler items, empty
verb slots in which agreement was not an issue, as for example in nonfinite
t\irms. The proportion of filler and critical items was 43:31. The test
consisted of 42 short episodes (many of which contained more than one
blank) whose only purpose was to establish a context that provided
enough cues for the subjects to be able to make a deliberate choice. To
the extent that my imagination allowed, these episodes were made up by
myself Certain public events that were current at the time of devising
the stories were a partial source of inspiration. To ensure maximum
comparability, the English and German versions were exactly identical.
The complete test materials may be obtained upon request.
As English does not consistently code number on the verb, an attempt
was made to bias the subjects toward using one of the tenses that have
(litTerent singular and plural forms, m particular the present tense. For
the same reason, some test sentences were constructed so that to be and
tt) have were a likely choice. However, even at the risk of obtaining
unmformative responses, the stories granted the subjects a certain freedom of choice so as to render the completion task not too mechanistic
and dull.
The test was administered to 46 native speakers of German and 57
native speakers of American English. The German subjects were recruited
from an introductory linguistics class at the University of Oldenburg.
None of them had received any prior instruction on agreement principles.
The resolution of number conflicts In English and German 49
Their age range was from 19 to 30. The subjects participated on a
voluntary basis and received no course credit. It would have been ideal
to administer the test to monolingual Germans, as any knowledge of
English might have contaminated their responses. As a matter of fact,
entirely monolingual speakers are hard to find because English as the
first foreign language is a compulsory subject in most German schools.
However, it is highly unlikely that the subjects' knowledge of English
interfered with their native-language behavior. An informal posttest interview revealed that the differences presented below were unknown even
to subjects with a fairly good command of English. What is more, the
mastery of two languages can only work toward minimizing possible
divergences. So if differences between the two groups emerge, they can
be attributed to the different native languages of the subjects.
The English speakers divide into two age groups, the younger ranging
from 17 to 18 (24 people) and the older ranging from 45 to 55 (33
people). The members of both groups were residents of the greater Seattle
area. The younger ones attended Highline High School, a state-owned
institution located in the south of Seattle with a lower-middle-class population. The students who took part in this study belonged to the top
30% and were preparing for university in an honors class. Their first
foreign language was Spanish, German, or French with a roughly equal
share of each. As expected, there was no indication in the data to be
reported below that those studying German responded differently from
those learning Spanish or French.
The older group consisted mostly of couples. They came from the
lower- and upper-middle classes, many of them with a B.A. degree.
Almost all of them were either monolingual or did not practice the
foreign language they had learned at school.
The availability of data from two different populations furnished an
opportunity of investigating the possible effect of age upon agreement
patterns.
3.
Results
The subjects had little difficulty with the fill-in-the-blank test. Only one
English subject (from the younger group) had to be discarded because
of an inordinate number of nonsensical responses. All in all, 1.1% of the
German data and 9.2%i of the English data were classified as inappropriate. In the main, this category consisted of no responses at all or the
choice of a verb tense in which the number distinction is neutralized (in
particular the past tense). Herein lies one major reason for the elevated
rale ol iiiappropiinlc responses among the English group. Past-tense
icspoiiNos iVoni the Cieniian group could be included in the analysis
heeause (leinian, unlike Finglish, eodes number information on all
liiule foiiiis.
The two subsels of (he luiglish data are extremely homogeneous. There
IS nut a single llem on vvliieh the responses from the younger and older
group aie signilieaiilly diderenl. The two subsets will not therefore be
presented separately. At this point, then, the influence of age on
agreement deeisions (or any other factors related to it) may be considered
negligible. On the limited basis o\' these two samples, it can be concluded
that the •"grammar of agreement" appears to be diachronically stable, at
le.isl aeri^ss the two generations studied.
I he results ol the experiment arc presented in Table 1. It reports on
all o\' the 31 eritieal items, which are grouped into the eight categories
introduced above. Ihe eritieal items from both languages appear in the
fust eolumn. They are followed by the number and percentage of singular
\s plural \erbs as well as the rate of inappropriate responses. The
percentages were ealeulated on the basis of appropriate responses only.
The last column gives the significance level derived from ANOVAs (by
Items)."^ The standard level of significance is reached at p<0.05. The
numbers in parentheses indicate the number of items in each category.
In line with the contrastive approach taken in this paper, the discussion
o'( Table 1 and even more so the theoretical analysis will be mainly
eoneentialed on the eross-Iinguistic differences m the resolution of
agreement eonlliets. We will begin with the few lexical items that were
tested in this study. A very clear picture emerges in category 1. The
nK)rphologieally singular nouns with plural meaning trigger singular
.igrcement in (ierman but strongly favor plural agreement in English.
\\ hile the behavior of the German subjects is highly unequivocal, the
American subjects exhibit a certain equivocalness. The stimulus the majority generates more than one-third singular responses. This ambivalence
leeurs throughout Table 1. The low number of items in category I precludes any far-reaching conclusions. However, the results suggest that
\erb agreement in this category is governed by syntactic principles in
German but by semantic principles in Enghsh.
If this cross-linguistic difference is of more general vahdity, we would
expect the reverse pattern in category 2, which houses morphologically
plural nouns with a potentially singular meaning. Plural agreement should
be the rule in German, singular agreement in English. This prediction is
only partly fulfilled. It is borne out by 40 acres - 40 Morgen but not by
pancakes Pfaimkiichcn. The latter item strongly favors plural agreement
in both languages even though this would be expected only for German.
The resolution of number conflicts in English and German 51
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52
Thomas Berg
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The resolution of number conflicts in English and German 53
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54
Thomas Berg
Although the context in which pancakes was embedded introduced a bias
toward the "dish" interpretation {Pancakes
my favourite food), the
subjects apparently preferred to view pancakes as individual, countable
entities. The reason they did so probably relates to the extralinguistic
fact that a conventional portion of pancakes consists of more than one
pancake. Clearly, more nouns would have to be tested before it can be
reliably established v^heiher pancakes is an exceptional item or an instance
of a more general pattern. Unfortunately, our curiosity is hampered by
the fact that there are very few morphologically plural nouns with a
potentially singular meaning in German.
A more detailed analysis can be ofiFered of category 3, which constitutes
the lion s share of the empirical data. The 13 items are treated in strikingly
homogeneous fashion. All of them favor singular agreement in German
and almost all of them favor plural agreement in English. In each case,
the difference between the languages is statistically significant. This finding from category 3 is entirely congruent with what was reported for
category 1. The English data fall all along the range from an overwhelming predominance of the semantic principle to an equilibrium of the
semantic and the syntactic principles. This balance is found in a hunch
of flowers and a heap of old papers. The reason for the reduced number
of plural responses in these items appears to lie in the salience of the
singular meaning associated with the head noun. A bunch of flowers is
perceived as an undifferentiated mass of flowers. By contrast, the head
noun in the majority of cidtdts does not express a singular concept but
rather assumes the function of a quantifier such as most. This proposal
goes some way toward explaining why this latter item elicited the lowest
number oi singular responses. The general rule that seems to determine
the strength of the semantic principle in English is the lexicosyntaetie
status of the head noun. When it is "demoted" to a function word (i.e.
quantifier), the semantic principle can unfold itself in largely unrestrained
fashion. However, when the head noun preserves its lexical character, its
singular number may keep the influence of the plural noun from growing
too strong. The data indicate that the majority of adults and a bunch oj
flowers are best seen as end points on a continuum with many intermediate shades.
This analysis is buttressed by a comparison of the two items a number
of critical issues vs. a small number of stings. The former elicited a
significantly higher number of plural responses than the latter. While a
number of is very similar in function (and form) to a lot of the adjective
small appears to guarantee the integrity of the (singular) noun and thus
prevents it from being demoted.
The resolution of number conflicts in English and German 55
The English data, in particular the items a hunch offlowers and a heap
of old papers are interesting in another respect. The fact that they engender
an ahTiost equal number of singular and plural responses is noteworthy
because it points to the inherent limitation of any rule-based approach
to agreement with rules conceived of as either/or devices. No single rule
can explain this wavering usage. A two-rule approach undoubtedly fares
better, but it remains silent on how possible rule conflicts are reconciled.
A more adequate approach is therefore to refer to forces that may be of
varying (or equal) strength.
The German data also display some of the variability found in English.
Four of the 13 items allow between 30% and 40% "English" (i.e. plural)
responses, one of them being eine Reihe von Beriehten "a series of reports'.
The interpretation of these cases is the same as above. Eine Reihe von
tends to be construed as a quantifier and therefore provokes a higher
number of plural responses.
Overall, there is strong indication in the data that the semantic and
the syntactic force jointly determine the agreement patterns in German
and English "N(sg) o / N ( p l ) " structures. The syntactic force typically
prevails in German (see also Findreng 1976), but the semantic force in
English. This difference is, however, of a gradual nature in that the
nondominant force usually also plays a role. The most extreme case is
one in which the two conflicting forces are equally strong. Interestingly,
in none of the 13 critical items is the untypical force appreciably stronger
than the typical force. This testifies to a language-internal consistency
and, by implication, to possible limits on the nature of agreement systems
in natural language.
From the contrastive viewpoint, category 4 is largely unremarkable.
Of the five tokens, only two generated a cross-linguistic difference that
is statistically rehable (even though it is less pronounced than any of the
other differences found in this study). The item neither Boris nor Jim —
weder Boris noch Jim produced a majority of plural responses in both
languages but significantly more so in German than in English (contra
Farkas and Ojeda 1983). The other item peace and prosperity - Eriede
und Wohlsland generated significantly more singular responses in English
than in German. It is interesting to note that a plural verb is preferred
in both languages after its positive counterpart either the one or the other.
Clearly, the latter structure does not support a plural reading on logical
grounds. The plural in the former structure is more difficult to explain.
It may be that neither X nor Y is treated in the same way as both X and
Y because with appropriate changes in the VP, the latter may be a
paraphrase of the former. Neither Boris nor Jim have the slightest chance
is roughly equivalent to Both Boris and Jim have not the slightest chance
56
Thomas Berg
(see Langendocn 1970). In short, this tentative account holds that the
agreement pattern of the more marked (i.e. negative) structure may be
modelled after that of the less marked (i.e. positive) structure.
Category 5 is not productive of any cross-linguistic differences. The
only notable aspect is that the semantic influence is surprisingly small. It
might be expected on semantic grounds that friore than one X ~ mehr ah
ein X is followed by a plural verb and fewer than two Xs - weniger als
zwei Xs by a smgular verb. However, the opposite is true. Apparently,
the subjects were guided by the numerals preceding the dependent noun
even though an isolated focus on this NP is orthogonal to the meaning
of the superordmate NP This meaning is not explicitly coded but has to
be derived much like a mathematical calculation. It is not unlikely that
such an operation is too etTortful for its outcome to influence a linguistic
decision that has to be taken quickly and largely automatically.
As can be seen from Table 1, the singleton item in category 6 elicited
only singular responses in German but a majority of plural responses in
English. It thus duplicates the pattern discovered in categories 1 and 3.
In all likelihood, this difference follows from a disparity in the way this
concept is coded in the two languages. The German rendition mancher
Mann shows no overt sign of plurality. In a language where the syntaetie
force predominates, we cannot therefore expect anything but a singular
verb. By contrast, the English equivalent manv a man contains the plural
exponent many. In concert with the strength of the semantic force, this
exponent tips the scales in favor of a plural verb. The 25% singular-verb
responses probably reflect the influence of the indefinite article a in this
construction.
Despite certain syntactic difl'erences, the categories 7 and 8 produce
remarkably similar results. The German and American subjects react in
significantly different ways in each of the six examples. The most notable
finding is that the pattern of categories 1 and 3 is reversed in categories
7 and 8. This time, the Germans used more plural verbs than the
Americans. The stimuli in category 7 elicited a majority of plural
responses from the Geimans but a majority of singular responses from
the Americans. Among them is the cause
had brakes ~ die Ursache
kaputte Bremsen, which yielded a difference of 86%. The agreement
decision of the German subjects appears to be guided by the (plural)
complement whereas the primary factor influencing the decision of the
English subjects is the (singular) grammatical subject.
The extent of the cross-linguistic difference is smaller (though still
reliable) in category 8. The German subjects almost invariably inserted
a plural verb in all three cases. However, for the American group, the
distinction between clefts and pseudoclefts played a role. The subjects
The resohition of number confliets in English and German 57
were unanimous in using a singular verb in the only instance of a cleft
sentence //
the old politicians who
..'' In contrast, the two pseudoclefts yielded a majority of plural responses. In this respect, then, the
English speakers tend to follow the German pattern although they are
less extreme (or consistent) in their reactions. The explanation for the
opposite tendencies in English clefts and pseudoclefts probably lies in the
nature of the pronoun introducing these sentence types. The cleft sentence
begins with the pronoun /7, which is unmistakably singular. It is therefore
not surprising that singular responses prevailed among the English subjects. The pronouns introducing the pseudoclefts are all and what. In
sharp contrast to it, these are relatively neutral in terms of number (but
see the qualifications made above). The pronoun all for example can
modify a singular noun (all the time) ox a plural noun {all the students).
This relative neutrality does not interfere with the semantic principle,
which may consequently deploy its full vigor.
By way of interim summary, the investigation of the eight categories
has uncovered pervasive differenees in the way agreement conflicts are
resolved in English and German. Generally speaking, German speakers
favor a syntactically based agreement, whereas American speakers give
more weight to the semantic side. In cleft sentences and sentences with
subject complements, the German and American subjects show trends
opposite to those observed in the other categories. Pseudoclefts create a
unique pattern. Both the Germans and the Americans treat them "the
English way," even though statistically significant differences between the
subject groups remain. To be specitic, the Germans follow the semantic
principle more closely than the Americans.
In the remainder of this section, two subsidiary analyses will be carried
out, one focusing upon the consistency with which the semantic or the
syntactic principle is adhered to, and the other inquiring into betweensubject variation.
The observation that the semantic influence ordinarily prevails in
English but the syntactic influence in German may be supplemented by
an examination of the strength of the two factors. Is the semantie principle
as strong in English as the syntactic principle in German, or do the
(non-)dominant influences in the two languages differ in strength? As the
eight categories vary in size, it is necessary to determine the strength of
the nondominant factor per category. Since category 3 is the largest
of all, it was singled out for this analysis. The number of responses to
all 13 items was added up for both groups of subjects and transformed
into percentages. The nondominant influence had an average strength of
23.5% in Enghsh and 15.3% in German. This difference is not significant
at the 0.05 level, although a certain trend is discernible. Thus, there is
58
Tfwnuis Berg
lillle statistical support for the claim that the nondominant force is
stronger in English than in German "N(sg) + o / + N ( p l ) " constructions.
The empirical analysis will be complemented by a look at betweensubject consistency. The relevance of this issue was noted by Ferguson
and Barlow (1988). Morgan (1972) stated that speakers of the same
language may difter widely in terms of the resolution rules they employ
m cases of agreement conflict. Obviously, the existence of individual
variation reduces the generality of the resolution rules. A by-subjects
analysis makes sense only when the number of items per category is
sufficiently large to draw conclusions about the consistency of the subjects behavior. Therefore, category 3 was again selected for closer scrutiny. It was examined how many subjects in each group treated the 13
items the English or the German way. The English way was operationalized as more than 50% plural (i.e. semantically determined) responses,
the German way as more than 50% singular (i.e. syntactically determined)
responses.
As expected, the vast majority of American subjects (95%) behaved
the English way and the vast majority of German subjects (93%) the
German way. Thus, the criterion of whether a singular or a plural verb
was chosen neatly distinguishes between the American and German
groups. However, the behavior within each group was not entirely uniform. There were three people in the Enghsh group who behaved the
German way and three people in the German group who behaved the
English way. While relatively low, this number suggests that an agreement
principle that predominates in a language need not be internalized by
every speaker of this language. This implies that the constraints on
agreement are probabilistic in a twofold sense. They are not obeyed by
all speakers, and they may be counteracted by other constraints.
4.
Theoretical discussion
In this paper, an attempt has been made to induce agreement conflicts
and to determine whether these conflicts are resolved in languageparticular fashion. A conflict may be said to be in evidence when at least
two opposing forces can be shown to compete with each other. Can such
a conflict be argued to have arisen in the above experiment? Clearly, only
one principle can manifest itself on every single occasion. So the syntactic
force may have been operative to the exclusion of the semantic force on
some trials and vice versa on others. In this view, the two forces would
never be operative simultaneously and it would be unjustifled to speak
of a conflict between them. This account is unlikely because it has
The resolution of number eonfUets in English and German 59
difficulty explaining the gradient nature of the data. If only one force
was involved in each agreement decision, it would have no competitors
and might therefore be expected to produce a deterministic pattern.
However, the results were more diversified. To account for this variability,
it would have to be assumed that one force is active in one case and the
other force in another. The major weakness of this hypothesis is that it
provides no satisfactory explanation for why this variability should occur.
Note that this variabihty is extreme because only two states are allowed —
100% activity of the semantic factor accompanied by zero activity of the
syntactic factor and vice versa.
If, however, the two forces are assumed to overlap in time, they enter
into competition and produce probabihstic results. Any particular decision may be understood as a struggle between two (or more) principles
of which the stronger one eventually prevails. The strength of a given
factor may vary within limits both within a language and crosslinguistically. It may thus be argued that the empirical data can be more
naturally accommodated by the hypothesis of simultaneous^^ availability
than by the hypothesis of mutual exclusiveness of the two principles.
This claim is at odds with all proposals that treat agreement as either
a syntactic or a semantic phenomenon (see Introduction). The syntactic
influence cannot be reduced to a semantic influence and vice versa. Both
principles exist independently of each other, vie with each other, and
jointly shape the agreement patterns. Since only two forces appear to be
involved in the experimental task and since these two forces work against
each other m the materials on which this study is based, they must
contract a complementary relationship. When the one is strong, the other
is necessarily weak.
To better appreciate the nature of this relationship, a production system
will be sketched out that is designed to principally allow the simultaneous
activity of different forces of variable strength. According to conventional
wisdom, the process of language production begins with a nonhnguistic
representation of the speaker's intention (e.g. Levelt 1989). This message
level contains the semantic information that guides the selection of linguistic units. At the selection stage, syntactic and lexical representations
are built up. This representational change involves a change in the forces
at work. While the semantic force prevails at the message level, the
syntactic force (among others) takes over at the linguistic stage. Forces
unfold their maximum strength at the level to which they appertain.
However, a given force is not totally confined to its "home level." It may
"spill over" to a neighboring level, but its strength at the neighboring
level is appreciably lower than at the home level. This leakage may be
understood as resulting from the fact that one representation has to be
60
Thomas Berg
mapped into another and that the higher representational level feeds the
lower one." Since the information flow is mainly from top to bottom in
language production, spill-over effects are more important from a superordinale to a subordinate level than vice versa. Thus, the semantic force
may make a certain impact at the linguistic stage, but the syntactic force
will have less of an effect at the ideational stage.
This framework provides a rationale for assessing the strength of the
semantic and syntactic factors. We will start out from the assumption
that the semantic force is largely invariant across languages. To be
specific, the strength with which the semantic influence impacts upon the
syntactic level is equal in English and German. It seems natural to
presume that the speakers of both languages conceptualized the episodes
in general and the critical items in particular in much the same way,
given that the texts submitted to the two groups were semantically equivalent. There is no reason to believe that a group of researchers is conceptualized as a plural entity and its German equivalent eine Gruppe von
Forschern as a singular entity. In short, the differential agreement patterns
in English and German are claimed to have a linguistic, not an ideational cause.
If this is true, how does the variability arise within the hnguistic
component proper? Given the competitive nature of the system, one
major factor determining the strength of the semantic force at the syntactic stage is the strength of the syntactic force in its home domain. If the
syntactic influence is relatively weak, it may be overridden by the semantic
influence. In the light of a good part of the empirical data, this appears
to be a fair description of the English system. What, then, weakens the
syntactic factor in this language? Agreement presupposes a morphology
to express the relationship between target and controller. As is well
known, the inflectional morpliology of English is highly impoverished.
Case and gender inflectional morphology have completely disappeared
and number morphology is restricted to the third person in the present
tenses. Thus, there is hardly any opportunity for (syntactically based)
agreement processes to operate in English. It is a general cognitive
principle that frequency impacts upon the strength of a phenomenon.
The less frequently it occurs, the weaker it is. As a consequence, the
limited opportunity that the language provides for expressing syntactically based agreement relationships involves a weakening of the syntactic
force. In view of the complementary relationship between the syntactic
and the setnantic influence, this weakening of the syntactic force implies
a strengthening of the semantic force. Hence, the agreement pattern in
Enghsh is for the larger part semantically based.
The resolution of number conflicts in English and German 61
The situation is quite different in German. Unlike English, it has
preserved much of its inflectional morphology, which codes case, gender,
and number distinctions across the major and (some) minor word classes.
Case, gender, and number agreement processes are rife in German. In
particular, the number agreement between the subject and the verb applies
throughout the tense system. This high frequency of syntactically based
agreement processes accords a great deal of strength to the syntactic
principle, which is therefore in a position to outweigh the semantic
influence. As a result, the agreement pattern in German is for the larger
part syntactically based.
The above analysis would be amplified if it could be shown to play a
role in the explanation of the opposite empirical trends. It will be recalled
that "NP-I-copula-hsubject complement" constructions as well as clefts
and to a lesser extent pseudoclefts elicited more singular responses in
English than in German. In actual fact, the account of the "typical"
pattern serves as the point of departure for the explanation of the "untypical" pattern. It was claimed above that the impoverished morphology
underlies the predominance of the semantic influence on agreement decisions. This impoverished morphology has another oft-noted consequence
(e.g. Hawkins 1986). Morphological case markers ensure the assignment
of words to functional categories such as subject and object. If these case
markers fade out of the language, speakers have to compensate for this
loss by relying upon a different source of information, typically word
order. However, word order is suited to this purpose only on condition
that it is fixed. When it is variable, the subject and object positions would
obviously be indistinguishable. Hence, English had to make up for its
morphological attrition by settling on a consistent word-order pattern.
This is in fact what happened. While Old English had three different
word orders (i.e. SVO, SOV, VSO), Modern English is a highly consistent
SVO language that tolerates alternative orders only under exceptional
circumstances (Lehmann 1978).
This fairly rigid word order is the key to an understanding of the
untypical responses. The most important implication of the SVO order
in the present connection is the almost exclusive "orientation to the left"
in the course of agreement decisions. Since the subject is the controller
of the verb and since the subject almost always precedes the verb, English
speakers are strongly biased to "turn leftward" in their search for information pertaining to agreement.^" This bias is so strong that information
following the verb is hardly taken into consideration, irrespective of its
potential relevance. This strategy explains why the subject complement
makes little impact upon the agreement decision in sentences like the
cause (to be) bad brakes for example. It also explains the pattern in cleft
62
Thomas Berg
and psetidocleft sentences where the plural noun follows the verb to
which the agreement morpheme has to be attached.
It is now a straightforward matter to come to grips with the untypical
data in German. Due to its rich morphology, there is no need for a fixed
word order. Actually, word order is relatively variable in German. It is
quite often compulsory for the subject to be placed after the verb, as
m (3).
(3)
a.
b.
Gestern starb der Musiker X.
yesterday died the musician X
'The musician X died yesterday,
Gestern starben die Musiker X and Y.
yesterday died the musicians X and Y
'The musicians X and Y died yesterday.
To select the correct verb form, German speakers must regularly "look
to the right." Since the subject may precede or follow the verb, they must
have developed a strategy of attending to the portions preceding as well
as following the verb. This strategy grants the subjects the freedom to
elect as controller the preverbal or the postverbal NP. The fact that the
Germans preferred the logical to the grammatical subject may be regarded
as a natural choice. The logical subject in (pseudo-)cleft sentences is the
"real" subject in their noncleft counterparts; compare Es (sein) die alten
Politiker, die
with Die alten Politiker
.. In sentences with subject
complements, the order of the two subjects is easily reversible, compare
die Ursache (sein) kaputte Bremsen with Kaputte Bremsen (sein) die
Ursache. Also, the nominal predicate is the informationally more important part of the sentence and may therefore be elected as controller.
A noteworthy feature of the preceding account is its ability to deal
with two apparently conflicting sets of data. Both the data in which the
semantic principle prevails and the data in which the syntactic principle
prevails are amenable to an explanation that makes crucial reference to
the morphological structure of the language. The impoverished morphology of English has a twofold consequence. For otie thing, it severely
reduces the opportunity for syntactically based agreement and thereby
accords an advantage to the semantic principle. For another, it entails a
rigid SVO order, which predisposes the speakers to make the verb agree
with the preverbal material regardless of the nattire of the postverbal
material. This strategy is obvtously syntactic and therefore accords an
advantage to the syntactic principle. It may thus be concluded that the
two conflicting tendencies have essentially the same cause.
Whether the semantic or the syntactic principle predominates depends
entirely upon the linguistic structure and can be readily captured by the
The resolution of number eonflicts in English and German 63
following rules (for English). When there is a confiict between the preverbal and the postverbal material, the syntactic principle usually wins out.
When the conflict arises within the preverbal domain, the semantic principle is preponderant. This is because the syntax directs the speaker's
attention only to the preverbal NP as such, not to its internal structure.
The claim that English (and Gennan) agreement is semantic in some
respects but syntactic hi others is not what would qualify as a uniform
or consistent account. Even though there is no a priori reason to expect
languages to be entirely consistent, the credibility of the theory would be
enhanced if this inconsistency could be eliminated at a deeper level. How
is it possible for a language to have a strong semantic as well as a strong
syntactic force, bearing in mind that the two forces are antagonistic in
nature? This conceptual problem can be solved by examining the relationship between the syntactic force and the mechanism that gives rise to it.
At first sight, it would seem logical to contend that a strong syntactic
influence is indicative of a powerful syntactic processing mechanism. This
is, however, not the case. With respect to word order, English may be
legitimately regarded as a syntactically impoverished language.'~^ The
strong predominance of the SVO order reduces the word-ordering component to a device that operates almost bhndly. It has almost no real
processing decisions to take because there are hardly any alternative
orders to be taken into consideration. The opposite is true of German.
The large number of possible orderings, sometimes only with minor
semantic differences, implies a high degree of competition. Thus, the
syntactic component has to deploy all of its processing capacity to select
one structure from a set of alternatives. This justifies assigning Gernian
the status of a syntactically flexible language.
It may be inferred from this that the strength of the syntactic factor
in agreement decisions and the creativity of the syntactic processor need
not go hand in hand. The case of Enghsh illustrates that the syntactic
factor may be strong even when syntactic processing is weak. This relationship is necessarily of the inverse kind. The reliance on syntactic cues
was argued to follow from a lack of syntactic variability. So if the
syntactic processor was more creative, the reliance on syntactic cues
would disappear, as was indeed observed for German.
The upshot of the preceding discussion is that there is less inconsistency
in the theoretical account than was initially suspected. Although there is
no doubt that some agreement decisions in English are syntactically
based, this does not make English a syntactically powerful language.
There is thus no obstacle to the claim that the agreement patterns testify
to a weak degree of syntacticity in English and a strong degree of
syntacticity in German.^''
64
Thomas Berg
It is tempting to speculate that agreement is not an isolated phenomenon obeying singular laws but rather one instance from a range of
phenomena that are shaped by the same general principle. Could it be
that the high degree of syntacticity is a GENERAL characteristic of German
and the high degree of semanticity a GENERAL characteristic of English?
Of course, it would be foily to expect all conceivable phenomena to fall
neatly into place, because languages are complex, multiply determined
systems that cannot be squeezed into a simple bipolar scale. Yet, it seems
worth exploring the possibility that the validity of the differential localization of English and German on the semanticity/syntacticity continuum
may extend beyond agreement. In this spirit, four different areas, which
are open to the simultaneous influence of semantic and syntactic factors,
will be briefly discussed from the contrastive perspective. Generally speaking, the expectation is that the syntactic force will be stronger in German
and the semantic force stronger in English.
The first area to be investigated is possessive NP constructions. Both
English and German have the alternatives "NP's N" and "the N of NP"
as in Peter'.s shoe - Peters Sehuh and the brother of Amie - der Bruder
von Anne. Hawkins (1981) argued that the decision between the two
constructions in Enghsh is under the control of a linear-ordering principle
that IS semantically based. For a complex NP to be acceptable, the first
noun has to exceed (or at least be equal to) the second noun in terms of
the features [humanness] and [ammacy]. Thus, Mary's car is impeccable
while ftte car of Mary is dubious. Similarly, the noun order in the foot
of the Diountain is preferred to that in the mountain s foot because/oof is
a human attribute, which assigns this word a higher rank on the humanness scale than mountain. We witness here a semantic penetration of the
syntactic issue of word order within the NP
No such semantic hierarchy exists in German. Das Auto von Peter 'the
car of Peter' is about as acceptable as Peters Auto "Peter's car' The
difference between the two versions is mainly a stylistic one. In general,
syntactic principles determine which of the two constructions is appropriate. For example, when the complex NP begins with a definite article,
the Saxon genitive construction is blocked: contrast Nachbcirs Garten
'neighbor s garden to *der Nachbars Garten 'the neighbor's garden. The
absence of a semantic motivation underlying the differential acceptability
of "NP"s N" and "the N of NP" constructions in Gernian (as well as its
presence in Enghsh) is exactly as would be expected under the syntacticity/
semanticity hypothesis advanced above.
The second area also evidences semantic restrictions on the acceptability of syntactic constructions. Enghsh and German both have sentenceinitial tlierelulales constructions in which the particle functions like an
The resolution of number conflicts in English and German 65
NP, as in There were many children - Da waren viele Kinder. As shown
by Erdmann (1979), virtually any verb may follow dales in German,
whereas only those verbs may appear in there constructions in English
that bear a semantic resemblance with to be. Thus, the German sentence
in (4) is acceptable while its English equivalent in (5) is not.
(4)
(5)
Da/es spielten viele Schiiler im Garten Karten.
*There played many pupils cards in the garden.
Again, German is blind to the semantic distinction that is made in
English. The latter language may be said to be more semantic because
the acceptability of a particular syntactic construction depends on the
semantics of the lexical material that is inserted into it. German does not
have this sensitivity. The da/es construction may apply across the board.
The syntactic principle is unassailable.
The next area concerns the expression of definiteness. In Gennan,
definiteness may be expressed on virtually any noun (save proper nouns
in educated language) by preposing a definite article. In English, by
contrast, there are restrictions on what classes of nouns may be preceded
by an article. Crucially, the features distinguishing these noun classes are
semantic in nature. One prominent feature is the distinction between
abstract and concrete nouns. Whereas concrete nouns may be preceded
by an article (e.g. the dishwasher), abstract nouns without postmodification may not (e.g. *the evil). Again, the semantics determines what counts
as acceptable in English but not in German.
What all three examples have m common is that the semantics interferes
with the syntax in English though not in German. This ensues directly
from the above claim that German has a stronger syntactic component
than English.
The final example further highlights the different predilections for
syntactic and semantic principles. The area to be discussed may seem
rather remote from what linguists are normally interested in and is
sometimes considered of minor importance. Still, it is also a property of
language and therefore deserves to be taken into account. This is the
domain of punctuation, in particular the placement of commas, which
might be assumed to be subject to arbitrary stipulation by normative
grammarians. Generally speaking, the major difference is that the placement of commas is mandatory in German but optional in English. The
relevant rules in Gennan make crucial reference to syntactic notions. Eor
instance, two main clauses connected by und "and" are separated by
commas, though not a main clause and a subordinate clause. To give
another example, relative clauses always require commas. The situation
is quite different in English. Perkins (1979) views commas as rhetorical
66
Thomas Berg
devices that serve to clarify what the writer had in mind. Relative clauses
are separated off by commas only when they are nondefining. The distinction between defining and nondefining is clearly a semantic one.
Note that the optionality of comma placement in English is directly
related to its semantic grounding. Because the semantics is highly variable
(accoreiing to the speaker's intention), a semantically based rule system
cannot be cast in a rigid mold. By contrast, syntax is more like a
straightjacket. A syntactically based rule system is therefore likely to be
of the compulsory kind.
To conclude, there is an encouraging body of evidence to suggest that
the semantic slant of English and the syntactic slant of German are not
confined to agreement phenomena but are rather more general in scope.
This is not to say, of course, that every single cross-linguistic difference
has to follow from this disparate propensity of the two languages. There
are certainly many other parameters that shape the structure of languages
and may counteract the tendencies uncovered here. One set of recalcitrant
data is the insensitivity of the English agreement system to conceptually
distinct NPs. As noted in the Introduction, "N of NP" constructions
with notionally singular heads are treated like "N of NP" constructions
with notionally plural heads (Bock and Miller 1991; Vigliocco,
Butterworth. and Garrett 1996). This absence of a semantic effect upon
agreement is quite unexpected within the theoretical framework developed
in the preceding section. One reason that stands in the way of reconciling
the conflicting data sets is that it is not clear by what factors the English
pattern observed by Bock and Miller is brought about. At present, it
looks like an idiosyncrasy. Though robust in English, it was replicated
in no other language that has heretofore been investigated. What is more
important in the present connection is that Bock and Miller s results
should not be taken to imply that the agreement process in English is
generally insensitive to semantic information. In unpubhshed followup
work. Bock and her associates discovered a sensitivity of the personal
pronoun in question tags to the notional number of the head in complex
NPs (see Vigliocco, Hartsuiker, et al. 1996:411). This effect is clearly
compatible with the views expressed in this article and suggests that Bock
and Miller s earlier findings have to be interpreted with caution.
5.
Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated that two different languages resolve numberagreement conflicts in different ways and has proposed reasons for why
they do so. It was found that semantic criteria play a dominant part in
The resohition of number conflicts in Enghsh and Gernian 67
English while syntactic criteria prevail in German. This pattern is fairly,
though not entirely, consistent across a large range of structures. The
deviant cases do not contradict the more typical ones because the same
cause underlies both. At the heart of the agreement decision is the
morphosyntactic component. When this component is weak, the syntactic
force has to yield to the semantic force, which is always present due to
the fact that the accessing of linguistic units is semantically driven.
However, when this component is strong, the syntactic force will easily
override the semantic force because the latter is not germane to the level
at which it is supposed to have an effect and is, therefore, of reduced
strength.
This account is of predictive value in the analysis of other languages.
To the extent that a language has a rich inflectional morphology and a
flexible syntactic processor, it will favor syntactically based resolution
principles. And to the extent that a language has an impoverished inflectional morphology and an inflexible syntactic processor, it will give
preference to semantically based agreement principles. Relatively little is
known for sure about which principle is cross-linguistically preferred.
Corbett (1994) argues that Enghsh is quite exceptional in allowing the
semantics to decide whether nouns such as team are followed by a singular
or a plural verb. According to the model outlined in this article, the
heightened semanticity of Enghsh is unusual only insofar as it is unusual
for a language to have a fixed word order and a poor inflectional
morphology.
Received 28 June 1996
Revised version reeeived
24 September 1997
University of Hamburg
Part of this research was presented as an invited talk at the University of Kassel.
Germany. Lutz Vogt's help with the data collection and Bob McLaughlin's assistance
with the English version of the test are gratefully acknowledged. Correspondence
address: Department of English, University of Hamburg, Voii-Melle-Park 6, 20146
Hamburg, Germany. B-mail;{thomas_berg(fl'jTz.uni-hamburg.deX
An alternative explanation according to which verb number is determined by the
paper.
Although the two concepts are related, they should not be equated. Bock and Cutting
(1992) showed that they may be empirically distinguished.
In this and all following examples, the English item precedes its German equivalent.
68
4.
Thomas Bag
llems such as sci.s.surs ;ind hinocular.s were not included because they are morphologically singular in iheir German equivalents, Schere and Fernglas respectively, and therc-
5. In one case, the indefinite article in English had lo be rendered by a definite article in
German ((/ crowd nf supporters ilie Meiii;c dcr Anhdnger).
6. The only exception is ,/ »;n,iaii and n.v- men - cine Frau and zwei Manner, in which the
cunnicl IS of a somewhat clilTerent nature; to wit, first vs. second noun.
7. It might be speculaled that this contradictory number specification is the rea.son for the
8. The absolute numbers of the singular and plural responses were entered into the
9. This radical dificrence is not expected under Cardinaletti's (1997) account of agreement.
She argues that the preverbal material acts as controller if and only if the expletive is
unambiguously marked as nominative. This is true neither of Gennan es nor of English
it, both of which ore ambiguous between nominative and accusative case.
10. No claim is made here to the effect that the beginning and end points of the activity of
stood in a weaker sense, in which the activity of the two factors overlaps for a certain
period of time.
11. Other explanations for tlie inevitability of the conflict between syntax and semantics
can be found in Jaeger (1992), Lehmann (1993), and Wunderlich (1994).
relatively uncommon syntactic option in English. At least it occurs far less often than
in Gennan. There constructions also require speakers to attend to the material
following the verb. Though of high token frequency, this singleton sentence type does
not seem to be able to undercut the general strategy in English of focusing upon the
material preceding the verb. One possible reason for this ineflectiveness of there constructions is that expletive there does not necessarily shift the speaker's attention to the
postverbal NP of the sentence. The number of the postverbal NP may be ignored in the
agreement process. A pluralized postverbal NP is compatible not only with a plural but
also with a singular verb. Though not of the same speaking style, both There are books
on the table and There's hooks on the table are commonly heard in Standard American
English (Sobm 1997). This variability shows that even there constructions are not
13. Let it be made quite clear that this claim is restricted to word-order pher
freely employed in English than in German (Hawkins 1986). However, these move14. Roberts (1985) introduced a distinction between two agreement systems, a morphological and a syntactic one. In this typology, German would belong in the first group and
English in the second. The labels morphological and syntactic are motivated by diOerences in government. Agreement is syntactically governed in English but morphologically governed in German. In the latter system though not in the former, the INFL
node is in charge of agreement. Roberts's approach does not seem to be able to handle
the results presented in this article. It is not clear how his syntactic theory can be made
to predict cross-linguistic differences in the impact of the SEMANTIC force. To be more
precise, it does not follow in any natural way from his theory that a lang\iage with a
a morphological agreement system.
The resolution of number confiiets in English and German 69
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