Gender agreement with exclusive disjunction in Slovenian

Abstract

This paper addresses two issues: 1. Empirically, we report novel experimental data on agreement with exclusively disjoined subjects in Slovenian; 2. Theoretically, we look into the nature of attested agreement strategies with coordinated NPs. In particular, we investigate how these strategies behave under coordinators with different semantics, i.e. exclusive disjunction and conjunction. Based on the elicitation results, we argue that closest conjunct agreement, resolved agreement, and highest conjunct agreement are all present under exclusive disjunction to different extents, which suggests a uniform set of agreement strategies under disjunction and conjunction despite the semantic difference. Further, we argue against the presence of default agreement under both disjunction and conjunction in Slovenian, and argue for a particular set of gender resolution rules.

Conjunction Agreement and the Coordinate Structure Constraint

“…Note that this alternative refers to the 12 In fact, earlier analysis such as Bošković (2009) categorized highest conjunct agreement in this order as unacceptable. 13 See Marušič & Shen (2021) for the same pattern in disjunction agreement.…”

“…Thus I will use the descriptive term masculine agreement in this paper. See Willer-Gold et al (2016); Marušič & Shen (2021) for detailed discussion.…”