Number and Grammatical Gender Attraction in Spanish Pronouns: Evidence for a Syntactic Route to Their Features
When a speaker produces a pronoun, they must choose a form that carries the appropriate features. The current study investigates how speakers identify these features. We consider two possible routes: a conceptual-lexical route, whereby pronouns derive their features from the concept of the referent,...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Ubiquity Press
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Journal of Cognition |
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| Online Access: | https://account.journalofcognition.org/index.php/up-j-jc/article/view/416 |
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| _version_ | 1823859345811570688 |
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| author | Margaret Kandel Claudia Pañeda Nasimeh Bahmanian Mercedes Martinez Bruera Colin Phillips Sol Lago |
| author_facet | Margaret Kandel Claudia Pañeda Nasimeh Bahmanian Mercedes Martinez Bruera Colin Phillips Sol Lago |
| author_sort | Margaret Kandel |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | When a speaker produces a pronoun, they must choose a form that carries the appropriate features. The current study investigates how speakers identify these features. We consider two possible routes: a conceptual-lexical route, whereby pronouns derive their features from the concept of the referent, and a syntactic route, whereby pronoun form is determined through a feature matching operation with the linguistic antecedent. We hypothesize that the use of these two routes should be differentially susceptible to interference from representations other than the pronoun’s referent. We use agreement attraction to distinguish them. In two experiments, we test whether Spanish speakers produce number and grammatical gender attraction errors. We observe small but reliable attraction effects for both features, demonstrating that pronoun formulation can be disrupted by the linguistic representations of nearby nouns. These attraction effects suggest that speakers can use a syntactic route to pronoun form. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-aa00c028c9cb4df69489268fbd2306d4 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2514-4820 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Ubiquity Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Journal of Cognition |
| spelling | doaj-art-aa00c028c9cb4df69489268fbd2306d42025-02-11T05:36:32ZengUbiquity PressJournal of Cognition2514-48202025-01-0181101010.5334/joc.416415Number and Grammatical Gender Attraction in Spanish Pronouns: Evidence for a Syntactic Route to Their FeaturesMargaret Kandel0https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8385-9745Claudia Pañeda1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1328-6605Nasimeh Bahmanian2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2561-176XMercedes Martinez Bruera3https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2891-7045Colin Phillips4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3886-3384Sol Lago5https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4966-1913Harvard University, CambridgeUniversity of Oviedo; Open University of CataloniaGoethe University, FrankfurtGoethe University, FrankfurtUniversity of Oxford, UK; University of Maryland, College ParkGoethe University, FrankfurtWhen a speaker produces a pronoun, they must choose a form that carries the appropriate features. The current study investigates how speakers identify these features. We consider two possible routes: a conceptual-lexical route, whereby pronouns derive their features from the concept of the referent, and a syntactic route, whereby pronoun form is determined through a feature matching operation with the linguistic antecedent. We hypothesize that the use of these two routes should be differentially susceptible to interference from representations other than the pronoun’s referent. We use agreement attraction to distinguish them. In two experiments, we test whether Spanish speakers produce number and grammatical gender attraction errors. We observe small but reliable attraction effects for both features, demonstrating that pronoun formulation can be disrupted by the linguistic representations of nearby nouns. These attraction effects suggest that speakers can use a syntactic route to pronoun form.https://account.journalofcognition.org/index.php/up-j-jc/article/view/416pronounsproductionagreement attractionnumbergrammatical genderspanish |
| spellingShingle | Margaret Kandel Claudia Pañeda Nasimeh Bahmanian Mercedes Martinez Bruera Colin Phillips Sol Lago Number and Grammatical Gender Attraction in Spanish Pronouns: Evidence for a Syntactic Route to Their Features Journal of Cognition pronouns production agreement attraction number grammatical gender spanish |
| title | Number and Grammatical Gender Attraction in Spanish Pronouns: Evidence for a Syntactic Route to Their Features |
| title_full | Number and Grammatical Gender Attraction in Spanish Pronouns: Evidence for a Syntactic Route to Their Features |
| title_fullStr | Number and Grammatical Gender Attraction in Spanish Pronouns: Evidence for a Syntactic Route to Their Features |
| title_full_unstemmed | Number and Grammatical Gender Attraction in Spanish Pronouns: Evidence for a Syntactic Route to Their Features |
| title_short | Number and Grammatical Gender Attraction in Spanish Pronouns: Evidence for a Syntactic Route to Their Features |
| title_sort | number and grammatical gender attraction in spanish pronouns evidence for a syntactic route to their features |
| topic | pronouns production agreement attraction number grammatical gender spanish |
| url | https://account.journalofcognition.org/index.php/up-j-jc/article/view/416 |
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