What knowledge is accessed and checked during gendered coreference dependency formation? English encodes information about gender in pronouns and names, and coreference dependency formation relies on antecedent gender of matching that of the anaphor. However, human gender is not binary, and nonbinary genders are increasing in visibility. We investigate whether nonstandard coreference dependencies are processed differentially across the population. We find higher acceptability and less processing cost among people with regular contact with transgender/nonbinary communities, particularly younger speakers. We suggest experience with gender variation influences speakers’ mental representations of gender, which are what is accessed during gendered coreference dependency formation.
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