Correlative coordination and variable subject-verb agreement in German
- Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers' agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl horizontal ellipsis als auch ('both horizontal ellipsis and'), weder horizontal ellipsis noch ('neither horizontal ellipsis nor') or entweder horizontal ellipsis oder ('either horizontal ellipsis or'). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct's relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, whichCoordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers' agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl horizontal ellipsis als auch ('both horizontal ellipsis and'), weder horizontal ellipsis noch ('neither horizontal ellipsis nor') or entweder horizontal ellipsis oder ('either horizontal ellipsis or'). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct's relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, which interacts with linear order and semantic factors. Semantic differences between conjunctions only affected speakers' agreement preferences in the absence of processing pressure but not their initial agreement computation. The combined results from our offline and online experimental measures of German speakers' agreement preferences suggest that the constraints under investigation do not only differ in their relative weighting but also in their relative timing during agreement computation.…
Author details: | Claudia FelserORCiDGND, Anna JessenORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020067 |
ISSN: | 2226-471X |
Title of parent work (English): | Languages : open access journal |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Place of publishing: | Basel |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2021/04/03 |
Publication year: | 2021 |
Release date: | 2022/11/11 |
Tag: | German; correlative coordination; subject– verb agreement |
Volume: | 6 |
Issue: | 2 |
Article number: | 67 |
Number of pages: | 20 |
Funding institution: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)German Research Foundation (DFG) [317633480-SFB 1287] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
DOAJ gelistet | |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |