Disagreements over agreement – a comparison of naïve and expert intuitions

Abstract

Th is paper presents the results of a study comparing native speaker intuitions on sentences with Closest Conjunct Agreement (CCA) obtained from linguists and non–linguists and it functions as a continuation of a larger study of agreement patterns in the South Slavic languages. In this particular research, we used a sentence–picture matching experiment with a 0–100 scale, which the participants used to indicate the acceptability of a particular sentence with a CCA pattern. Our participants were two groups of native speakers of Croatian (of the Shtokavian dialect) with diff erent levels of linguistic education: the non–linguists (N=30) were comprised of BA–level students of various subjects (excluding Croatian, Linguistics and Psychology), while the group of linguists (N = 30) was comprised of Croatian teachers and holders of PhD in Linguistics employed at elementary schools, high schools and universities. Th e diff erence between the results obtained from linguists and non– linguists as research participants has been a matter of scholarly debate for the past several decades (cf. Dąbrowska 2008, 2010) and our aim is to contribute to this discussion by providing data related to CCA. Th e results of the study indicate that there is a statistically signifi cant diff erence in linguistic intuitions between the two groups and there are valid reasons to attribute this diff erence to the level of linguistic training received. Th is diff erence is most clearly visible in the fact that linguists provided lower ratings on a general scale, regardless of the type of sentence and CCA pattern. A small–sized eff ect of age was also established.