Correlative Coordination and Variable Subject–Verb Agreement in German

Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report results from three experiments investigating German speakers’ preferences complex joined correlative conjunctions sowohl…als auch (‘both…and’), weder…noch (‘neither…nor’) or entweder…oder (‘either…or’). examine what extent conjunction type and a conjunct’s relative proximity verb affect acceptability processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed rating task, 2 timed sentence completion 3 self-paced reading task. Taken together, our that coordination in is primarily determined default constraint triggering agreement, which interacts linear order semantic factors. Semantic differences between only affected absence processing pressure not their initial computation. The combined offline online experimental measures suggest constraints under investigation do differ weighting also timing during