In this paper we report on the results of five experiments documenting the existence of three distinct grammars of conjunct agreement in Slovenian, found both within and across individuals: agreement with the highest conjunct, agreement with the closest conjunct, or agreement with the Boolean Phrase itself. We show that this variation is constrained and that some of these mechanisms can be blocked and/or forced depending on the properties of the conjuncts. Finally, we offer the suggestion that the presence of intraindividual variation arises because of ambiguous properties of the primary linguistic data.We thank the three anonymous Syntax reviewers and the following colleagues for comments, discussion, and help:

How does cross-linguistic variation in linguistic structure affect children's acquisition of early number word meanings? We tested this question by investigating number word learning in two unrelated languages that feature a tripartite singular-dual-plural distinction: Slovenian and Saudi Arabic. We found that learning dual morphology affects children's acquisition of the number word two in both languages, relative to English. Children who knew the meaning of two were surprisingly frequent in the dual languages, relative to English. Furthermore, Slovenian children were faster to learn two than children learning English, despite being less-competent counters. Finally, in both Slovenian and Saudi Arabic, comprehension of the dual was correlated with knowledge of two and higher number words.counting | grammatical number H ow does the structure of language affect children's acquisition of early number word meanings? Humans have a unique ability to express an unbounded set of exact numerical concepts, like "eighty-two" (1), which emerges only after children have begun using language (2). Cross-cultural studies find that number knowledge is typically related to learning a verbal count list, and that groups who lack large number words also lack the ability to represent large numerosities precisely (3-5). Together, such observations suggest that, across most human cultures, natural language plays a central role in the acquisition and use of number words, the basic building blocks of early mathematical development. However, beyond the fact that number word learning typically begins with acquiring a count list, surprisingly little is known about how the particular language a child speaks affects their ability to acquire number word meanings. In this article we investigated this question by testing how cross-linguistic differences in grammatical structure affect the early stages of number word development. In particular, we tested number word learning in two languages, Slovenian and Saudi Arabic, which provide rich morphological cues to the very first number words children acquire in development.By some accounts, linguistic structure is important to the acquisition of number words chiefly because it provides a system of labels for expressing preexisting numerical concepts (6). By other accounts, language plays a stronger role by providing a system for combining content from diverse perceptual and conceptual systems, thus allowing humans to construct new concepts, such as the positive integers, which would otherwise not be possible (7). Each of these past accounts has focused on how language supports number word learning by allowing humans to express or combine concepts. Others, however, have argued that beyond merely expressing and combining content, language may also support number word learning by providing specific cues to meaning via its morphological and syntactic structures, in ways that vary from one language to another (8-12). Specifically, children might attend to how number words are used with linguistic structur...

A number of authors have claimed that indefinite pronoun constructions like everything red are formed by raising a noun (thing) over a higher prenominal adjective (red). We examine phenomena in English and other languages which appear to show that adjectives participating in the indefinite pronoun construction do not correspond to prenominal forms, but to postnominal ones. We evaluate the challenges these results present for the N-raising account, showing that while some can be met, others apparently cannot. This outcome calls for a reexamination of postnominal position with indefinite pronouns.

Agreement with coordinated subjects in Slavic languages has recently seen a rapid increase in theoretical and experimental approaches, contributing to a wider theoretical discussion on the locus of agreement in grammar (cf. Marušič et al. 2007, Bošković 2009, Marušič et al. 2015). In this paper, we revisit the theoretical predictions proposed for conjunction agreement in a group of South Slavic languages, with a special focus on gender agreement. The paper is based on two experiments involving speakers of Bosnian/ Croatian/ Serbian (B/C/S) and Slovenian (Slov). Experiment 1 is an elicited production experiment investigating preverbal conjunct agreement, while Experiment 2 investigates postverbal conjunct agreement. The data provide experimental evidence discriminating between syntax proper and distributed agreement models in terms of their ability to account for preverbal Highest-Conjunct agreement, and present the need for a distinction between Default agreement (which has a fixed number and gender, independent of the value of each conjunct) and Resolved agreement (which computes number and gender based on the values of each conjunct, and must resolve potential conflicts). Focusing on the variability in gender agreement ratio across nine combinations, the experimental results for B/C/S and Slov morphosyntax challenge the notion of Gender markedness generally posited for South Slavic languages.

We test the hypothesis that children acquire the successor function-a foundational principle stating that every natural number n has a successor n+1-by learning the productive linguistic rules that govern verbal counting. Previous studies report that speakers of languages with less complex count list morphology have greater counting and mathematical knowledge at earlier ages in comparison to speakers of more complex languages (e.g., Miller & Stigler, 1987). Here, we tested whether differences in count list transparency affected children's acquisition of the successor function in three languages with relatively transparent count lists (Cantonese, Slovenian, and English) and two languages with relatively opaque count lists (Hindi and Gujarati). We measured 3.5-to 6.5-year-old children's mastery of their count list's recursive structure with two tasks assessing productive counting, which we then related to a measure of successor function knowledge. While the more opaque languages were associated with lower counting proficiency and successor function task performance in comparison to the more transparent languages, a unique within-language analytic approach revealed a robust relationship between measures of productive counting and successor knowledge in almost every language. We conclude that learning productive rules of counting is a critical step in acquiring knowledge of recursive successor function across languages, and that the timeline for this learning varies as a function of counting transparency.