SignificanceSyntactic distance is standardly measured hierarchically only by counting the nodes in a tree-like structure. The dominance of hierarchy over the other logically possible measure of distance—e.g., counting words in a linear order—stems from a large body of research. We show a strong preference for the linear strategy in coordination structures in South Slavic languages, with a design comparing agreement controllers that can come either before or after their target. A large-scale study over six geographically and linguistically distinct varieties discovered remarkable uniformity in this preference. Variation discovered was mostly intraindividual, strongly suggesting that a language can entertain synchronous “multiple grammars,” the most striking of which is the one requiring direct reference to linear order.

Two lines of theoretical research have dominated the question of the locus of gender resolution in the context of Slavic conjunct agreement. Goal Resolution accounts comprise of the assumption made by mainstream research that resolved value (masculine plural) on ConjP goal is readily available to be copied onto probe (Bošković 2009; Franks and Willer-Gold 2014; Marušič et al. 2015; Murphy and Puškar 2018). The Probe Resolution account instead argues that gender resolution takes place on probe once gender values have been copied from the two conjuncts, as proposed by Citko (2018). The current study aims to experimentally test the validity of these two theoretical accounts of gender resolution. In this objective, we first discuss the results of an elicited production study on conjunct agreement in South Slavic (Willer-Gold et al. 2018), which found production times for nine gender combinations to strongly correlate with uniformity of agreement exponents. This finding indicates that simultaneous activation of multiple conjunct agreement strategies is resolved by competition at the level of morphological exponents on probe, offering support for the Probe Resolution account. We then report a novel study comprised of three self-paced reading experiments in Croatian (n: 99) designed to validate the resolved masculine gender on ConjP goal with (in)congruent gender conjuncts. Results of this study suggest <masc> is an early predictor of the gender on the upcoming verbal target but its violation is detected late in the presence of an alternative agreement strategy in the experimental paradigm, and as expected when this alternative is eliminated from the experimental paradigm favouring Goal Resolution theories. Conflicting data from comprehension (self-paced reading) and production (elicited production) studies supporting Goal and Probe approaches are finally considered in the context of the production-comprehension asymmetry often observed in gender attraction studies.

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