Coordination: Symmetric or Asymmetric? Experiment 3 in Polish - Distance Effects

The aim of this project is to test the argument for asymmetric theories of coordination based on the (supposed) acceptability of sentences such as (1) 'You can depend on my assistant and that he will be on time'. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate whether the acceptability of such sentences depends on the distance between the selecting head and the apparently violating conjunct. We will compare the acceptability ratings for three sentence types in Polish, as illustrated by the following examples: (CP-First) Michał zmaga się, że szef przyjmuje potajemnie łapówki, z nieustającą biurokracją w firmie i z dużymi brakami w dokumentacji. (CP-Second) Michał zmaga się z nieustającą biurokracją w firmie, że szef przyjmuje potajemnie łapówki i z dużymi brakami w dokumentacji. (CP-Third) Michał zmaga się z nieustającą biurokracją w firmie, z dużymi brakami w dokumentacji i że szef przyjmuje potajemnie łapówki. In sentences such as (CP-First), a predicate ("zmagać się" ("struggle")), which typically requires a PP complement (or an NP complement, if the preposition is assumed to be a part of the predicate), is followed directly by a declarative CP introduced by "że" ("that"). In (CP-Second), the CP is the second conjunct of a coordination; in (CP-Third), it is the third. We hypothesize that the acceptability increases with the distance between the selecting head and the CP conjunct. The experiment is inspired by Kim & Lu (2024) and our previous experiments in English (experiments on OSF under the labels "Experiment 3a", "Experiment 3a on a Likert scale", "Experiment 3a with shorter conjuncts", "Experiment 3b").