In this analysis, /n/ is the most specific of the three markers while /e/ is the least specific (elsewhere) marker of the whole system (it is radically underspecified). \cite{12} Showing up in syntactic accusative contexts, the morphological exponent /e/ should therefore always meet the Compatibility criterion while /n/ and /s/ may give rise to a feature conflict.

The second reason for choosing these three markers in particular is that, when comparing different forms in different conditions in an ERP experiment, as many other factors as possible should be identical; i.e., the syntactic contexts should differ only in the feature specifications immediately relevant to the experiment. This requirement could be met by manipulating the gender of the noun that the adjective agrees with. All other factors of the context such as number (singular) and case (accusative) could be kept identical. Thus, in the accusative domain of the paradigm we found three good candidates to test our hypothesis: First, many existing theoretical approaches to pronominal inflection and strong adjective inflection in German converge on the assumption that the feature specifications of these exponents may differ with respect to both Specificity and Compatibility if chosen in incorrect contexts. And second, other factors could be kept nearly identical in the different conditions.

As mentioned earlier, the basic idea of the experimental design was that, whenever gender agreement was manipulated, the incorrect versions should represent different types of violation depending on the nature of their illegitimacy (viz., incompatibility of features versus a lack of specificity).

This basic idea is illustrated in (11) for phrases containing neuter nouns (more precisely, accusative neuter singular contexts). Depending on whether the preceding adjective is incorrectly marked with /e/ (i.e., a feminine form) or /n/ (i.e., a masculine form), two different types of violation occur.

(11) \textit{Two types of illicit neuter agreement} (based on marker specifications in Blevins 1995)

(a) correct

\begin{tabular}{lll}
durch & schlichtes & Design \\
by & plain.NEUT & design.NEUT
\end{tabular}

$[-\,\text{fem},\ -\,\text{obl}] \qquad [-\,\text{masc},\ -\,\text{fem};\ -\,\text{obl},\ +\,\text{obj}]$

(b) incorrect 1

compatible (excluded by Specificity)

\begin{tabular}{lll}
*durch & schlichte & Design \\
by & plain.FEM & design.NEUT
\end{tabular}

$[\ ] \qquad [-\,\text{masc},\ -\,\text{fem};\ -\,\text{obl},\ +\,\text{obj}]$

(c) incorrect 2

incompatible (excluded by Compatibility)

\begin{tabular}{lll}
*durch & schlichten & Design \\
by & plain.MASC & design.NEUT
\end{tabular}

$[+\,\text{masc},\ -\,\text{fem};\ -\,\text{obl},\ +\,\text{obj}] \qquad [-\,\text{masc},\ -\,\text{fem};\ -\,\text{obl},\ +\,\text{obj}]$

Assuming that all potentially intervening factors can be excluded, this difference of a violation of Compatibility versus Specificity should be mirrored in a systematically different pattern in relevant ERP components when comparing the two incorrect conditions with the correct condition. More precisely, regarding error detection we hypothesized that whenever a marker has conflicting features this could be a stronger cue for error detection than an incorrect but compatible marker. Under this view, an incompat-