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

What is the independent variable in this experiment? What is the dependent variable in this experiment?

Construct a test item for the "on accident" condition. Give a clear context, an example sentence using "on accident", and a Likert scale.

Construct a test item for the "by accident" condition. This item should be a

minimal pair of the "on accident" condition in (2a), with the same context. Give a clear context, an example sentence using "by accident", and a Likert scale.