Pridёt dvoje iz larca: an Experimental Study of Variable Agreement with Quantified Subjects

This paper presents an experimental study of predicative agreement in person and number with two types of quantified subjects containing a personal pronoun. Using two syntactic experiments with a rating task (the Likert scale), we compared the properties of the elective (dvoje iz nas ‘two of us’) and nominative (my dvoje ‘us two’) constructions regarding the preferred form of the verb in two configurations: with the preverbal and the postverbal position of the subject. Ordinal numbers (from dvoje ‘two of’ to semero ‘seven of’) and the quantifier word vse ‘all’ were compared as well. The results show that word order has a significant impact on the acceptability of different agreement strategies. For the elective construction, with the SV order, agreement by person and number of the quantifier is available, and the default agreement is rated as significantly less acceptable, while with the VS order, there are no significant differences between the ratings of the two agreement options. For a nominative construction with SV, only agreement by person and number of the pronoun is possible, while with VS, all strategies are rated as acceptable.