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The acquisition of subject-verb agreement in written French: From novices to experts' errors

The acquisition of subject-verb agreement in written French: From novices to experts' errors Recent studies have shown that many subject-verb agreement errors consist of making the verb agree with the immediately preceding noun, as in “The smell of the rubbish-bins are foul”. Assuming that it is the automaticity of the agreement operation which is responsible for these attraction errors in expert writers, the present studies aimed at demonstrating the gradual automatization of this operation in young writers by examining developmental changes in the occurrence of agreement errors. In three experiments we found that subjects' performance moves from systematic errors in number agreement in young children (e.g., no use of plural marks) to attraction errors in fifth graders and older adults through an intermediate phase characterized by an attention-demanding and easily disrupted computation of verb agreement displayed by some second graders. Attraction errors are a byproduct of the automatization of the implementation of the agreement process. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Reading and Writing Springer Journals

The acquisition of subject-verb agreement in written French: From novices to experts' errors

Fayol, Michel; Hupet, Michel; Largy, Pierre
Reading and Writing , Volume 11 (2) – Oct 15, 2004
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References (48)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Subject
Linguistics; Language and Literature; Psycholinguistics; Education, general; Neurology; Literacy
ISSN
0922-4777
eISSN
1573-0905
DOI
10.1023/A:1008038127807
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that many subject-verb agreement errors consist of making the verb agree with the immediately preceding noun, as in “The smell of the rubbish-bins are foul”. Assuming that it is the automaticity of the agreement operation which is responsible for these attraction errors in expert writers, the present studies aimed at demonstrating the gradual automatization of this operation in young writers by examining developmental changes in the occurrence of agreement errors. In three experiments we found that subjects' performance moves from systematic errors in number agreement in young children (e.g., no use of plural marks) to attraction errors in fifth graders and older adults through an intermediate phase characterized by an attention-demanding and easily disrupted computation of verb agreement displayed by some second graders. Attraction errors are a byproduct of the automatization of the implementation of the agreement process.

Journal

Reading and Writing – Springer Journals

Published: Oct 15, 2004

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