Under no illusion: An acceptability study on Czech agreement attraction

Abstract

Agreement attraction has been extensively studied in many languages and in both the production and comprehension of language. In comprehension, it has been found that ungrammatical sentences such as *The key to the cabinets were rusty are often judged as grammatical due to the presence of the attractor word cabinets that matches the verbal auxiliary in number. This is not the case when the attractor word is not plural, but singular (cabinet). This illusion of grammaticality has been documented in many of the world’s languages. Here, we report an untimed acceptability judgement experiment that tested the presence of this illusion with native speakers of Czech. We find evidence that Czech comprehenders notice the ungrammatical agreement pattern and judge these sentences as less acceptable, but that they are not affected by the the number-match of the attractor in any way.

Grammaticality illusions in Czech: A speeded acceptability study of agreement attraction

“…Furthermore, syncretism of the attractor alone (i.e., of one not in fact plural) was not found to give rise to attraction, as opposed to what was found in Russian (Slioussar, 2018). Finally, Lacina (2023) ran a pilot acceptability study on number attraction in Czech and found no evidence of the effect in untimed Likert scale judgements. However, since the illusion of grammaticality arises mostly in speeded tasks, these data are inconclusive regarding the presence of the effect in the language.…”

Number Agreement Attraction in Czech Comprehension: Negligible Facilitation Effects

“…The authors showed that while an agreement attraction effect was clearly visible for English data, no such effect was attested for Czech translation equivalent stimuli. Moreover, an untimed acceptability judgment study on Czech (Lacina, 2023 ) also did not reveal any agreement attraction effects. It did however show that Czech comprehenders were sensitive to the agreement violations present in attraction sentences.…”