Processing, Evaluation, Knowledge: Testing the Perception of English Subject–Verb Agreement Variation

This article explores US English speakers’ perception of subject–verb agreement variation by using self-paced reading and mouse tracking. Two experiments exposed participants to standard, nonstandard, and uncommon subject–verb combinations. Experiment 1 measures participants’ reading times, and experiment 2 measures their social judgments. The standard forms are [singular+doesn’t] and [plural+don’t]. The nonstandard form is [singular+don’t], which is attested widely across English varieties; the “uncommon” form was [plural+doesn’t]. Experiment 1 was a self-paced reading experiment, wherein participants read sentences word by word at their own pace. Reading times were slowed the most for uncommon agreement, and nonstandard agreement was also processed more slowly than standard agreement, showing that processing is sensitive to sociolinguistic variation. Experiment 2 was a mouse-tracking experiment, wherein participants read sentences and then chose between two photographs to indicate whether a high- or low-status speaker was more likely to say the sentence. Sentences with the nonstandard and uncommon patterns were more likely to be assigned to low-status speakers than were standard sentences. However, participants’ mouse movements showed that the decision-making processes for uncommon sentences were more like those of standard sentences. Implications for the understanding of sociolinguistic knowledge are discussed.