you have noticed recently that some people say on accident to mean 'accidentally', and others say by accident to mean 'accidentally'. You want to construct an acceptability judgment experiment to see which of the two constructions is more (descriptively) acceptable/grammatical to Gen-Z English speakers. Your hypothesis is that on accident is more acceptable in English for this group. You are creating stimuli for this experiment.

Data. Here are some descriptive facts you know about the PPs on accident and by accident already. Please control for these things in the stimuli you create. a. Both PPs mean 'accidentally'. b. Both PPs are adjuncts that modify V' constituents. c. Syntactically, both PPs must have the following structure:

v'

^

v' pp

3a)Test Item for the "by accident" Condition:

Context: In the same group conversation, another friend, Alex, chimes in with another anecdote from the same party.

Example Sentence: "John, who was trying to take a selfie, accidentally bumped into the table, causing his drink to spill by accident."

Construct a test item for the "on accident" condition. Give a clear context, an example sentence using "on accident", and a Likert scale. Construct another test item for the "by accident" condition. This item should be a minimal pair of the "on accident" condition from (3a), with the same context. Give a clear context, an example sentence using "by accident", and a Likert scale. Construct a filler item for this experiment. This should be an item that is predicted to be (descriptively) acceptable/grammatical. Give a clear context, an example sentence, and a Likert scale. Construct a filler item for this experiment. This should be an item that is predicted to be (descriptively) unacceptable/ungrammatical. Give a clear context, an example sentence, and Likert scale. Make this context and sentence completely different from the one before