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      Plural Conjuncts and Syncretism Facilitate Gender Agreement in Serbo-Croatian:Experimental Evidence

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      1 , 2 , *
      Frontiers in Psychology
      Frontiers Media S.A.
      agreement, syncretism, gender, number, Serbo-Croatian

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          Abstract

          The literature on agreement in South Slavic generalizes that conjunct agreement in gender is only possible when all conjuncts are plural (e.g., Bošković, 2009). Marušič et al. (2015) and Arsenijević and Mitić (2016a, b) attest a significant level of patterns contradicting this claim in elicited production experiments. They weaken the earlier generalization to a facilitating role of plural number for conjunct agreement in gender. However, the stimuli in the two respective experiments involve syncretism between the members of conjunction. The syncretism removes the possibility – at Phonological Form at least – that by agreeing with one conjunct, the verb disagrees with the other. It is hence expected to result in a similar surface effect as the facilitation by plurals, which makes it a potential confound variable. We report and discuss the results of an experiment aimed to test both the effect of syncretism and the reality of the facilitating effects of plural number. The results of the experiment yield positive answers to both questions: syncretism is a facilitating factor, but plural number nevertheless has its facilitating effect too – as confirmed by the stimuli without syncretism. Since syncretism is a phenomenon in which phonological information plays a central role, our findings support syntactic models of agreement which extend to the interface with phonology. Moreover, our results reveal a double similarity of conjunct agreement with agreement attraction, in both showing a (stronger) attraction effect of plural number compared to singular, and in being sensitive to syncretism (cf. Badecker and Kuminiak, 2007; Malko and Slioussar, 2013; i.e., Bader and Meng, 2002; Hartsuiker et al., 2003; Slioussar, 2018).

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          Most cited references17

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          First Conjunct Agreement: Against a Clausal Analysis

          Alan Munn (1999)
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            Similarities and differences between phrase structure and morphosyntactic violations in Spanish: An event-related potentials study

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              Forms and features: The role of syncretism in number agreement attraction

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Psychol
                Front Psychol
                Front. Psychol.
                Frontiers in Psychology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-1078
                07 May 2019
                2019
                : 10
                : 942
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Department of Serbian Language, University of Niš , Niš, Serbia
                [2] 2Institute for Slavic Languages, University of Graz , Graz, Austria
                Author notes

                Edited by: Simona Mancini,Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Spain

                Reviewed by: Zeljko Boskovic, University of Connecticut, United States; Cristiano Chesi, Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori di Pavia (IUSS), Italy

                *Correspondence: Boban Arsenijević, b.arsenijevic@ 123456gmail.com

                This article was submitted to Language Sciences, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

                Article
                10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00942
                6514152
                31133921
                c9343664-bce2-43db-920b-890b97f9b6f4
                Copyright © 2019 Mitić and Arsenijević.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 19 November 2018
                : 08 April 2019
                Page count
                Figures: 2, Tables: 1, Equations: 0, References: 41, Pages: 14, Words: 0
                Categories
                Psychology
                Original Research

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                agreement,syncretism,gender,number,serbo-croatian
                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                agreement, syncretism, gender, number, serbo-croatian

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