HOW FAR IS TOO FAR: THE COMBINED EFFECT OF SYNCRETISM AND SYNTACTIC DISTANCE ON SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT IN SERBIAN
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Abstract
The aim of this research paper is to examine the joint effect of syncretism and syntactic distance on subject-verb agreement in Serbian. To do so, the paper employs one comprehension experiment, a speeded grammaticality judgment task. The task is designed to determine whether an attractor noun syncretic with the nominative plural elicits more erroneous judgments in environments of varying syntactic distance, those with either prepositional or clausal postmodifiers. The results of the speeded grammaticality judgment task point to an apparent joint effect of syncretism and syntactic distance on agreement. More specifically, there is an evident increase in the number of attraction errors with syncretic, as opposed to non-syncretic attractors in prepositional and clausal postmodifiers. This increase is greater with prepositional than with clausal postmodification. These observations are elaborated within the retrieval approach to agreement.
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