Studying agreement variation in Russian: Problems and methodology.

Abstract

This paper opens the issue compiling a series of experimental studies on variable agreement in Russian. The agreement variation is not integrated into grammatical models due to the lack of any systematic approach to collecting data on the effect size and scope of relevant grammatical factors. We discuss methodological problems related to the study of agreement variability, and present case studies published in the special issue. We show that one of the possible solutions to the problem of including variability phenomena to the empirical basis of formal syntax is to use the methodology of experimental syntax