A new perspective on the Northern Subject Rule: General principles that go beyond the input

Abstract

The Northern Subject Rule consists of two restrictions on the realisation of -s in third person plural contexts, the Type of Subject constraint and the Subject Adjacency constraint. This thesis aims to see if speakers of a non-NSR variety of English show sensitivity to these constraints. The results from a grammaticality judgement test with two groups of speakers suggests that this is so. This suggests that the constraints of the Northern Subject Rule are not learned through the input, but rather are general principles that go beyond the input.