<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 5.5.2651.67">
<TITLE>RE: grammaticality judgements</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">Debra Ziegeler and Spike Gildea have provided some intelligent comments on, and questions about grammaticality judgments. Having been concerned with grammaticality and acceptability judgments for 30 years, I have a few more comments.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">First, when the reliance of formalists on grammaticality judgments is questioned, formalists are apt to reply that work by formalists have established the "robustness" of such judgments. Works most often cited are</FONT></P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times"> Schutze, Carson T. 1996. The empirical base of linguistics: grammaticality </FONT>
<BR><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times"> judgments and linguistic methodology. U Chicago.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times"> Cowart, Wayne. 1997. Experimental syntax: applying objective methods to </FONT>
<BR><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times"> sentence judgements. Sage.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">These are fine books, as far as they go, but I would argue that the robustness of grammaticality judgments that the authors see lies more in the eyes of formalist linguists than in real judgments by real language users. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">Part of the problem with grammaticality judgments stems from the fact that formalists tend to read only other formalists. In 1970 Thomas Bever published an extensive, and as far as I know, unanswered critique of grammaticality judgments. My own work on grammaticality and acceptability judgments began with my dissertation (1975), continued with a volume from the Fourth Nordic Linguistics Conference (1978), and has appeared from time to time in selected volumes of the Lacus Forum. And of course, the master Bolinger used to routinely give papers showing that sentences starred by formalists could be perfectly acceptable if given the proper context. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">But anyone looking at the indexes of Newmeyer's fine book, Language form and language function, will note that there are no references to grammaticality judgments, acceptability judgments, or the works of Cowert or Schutze.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">If pressed, formalists tend to respond to problems with such judgments by asserting (correctly) that "grammaticality" is not the same thing as "acceptability." Such defenses of grammaticality judgments then go on to assert that "grammaticality" is a "theory internal" matter and not subject to correction based on acceptability judgments. What such a view means for the philosophy of science is truly mind boggling.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">Finally regarding Spike's calls for experiments:</FONT>
</P>
<UL>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">></FONT><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">It might be interesting to compose actual quantifiable experiments to test</FONT>
<BR><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">></FONT><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">these anecdotal claims: Are there types of sentences that yield less</FONT>
<BR><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">></FONT><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">reliable judgements? Are there types of elicitation that yield less</FONT>
<BR><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">></FONT><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">reliable databases of utterances?</FONT>
</P>
<BR>
</UL>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">I do not know about tests of elicitation procedures, but those of us who use acceptability judgments have all noted quantitative evidence (distribution of responses, for example) that the reliability of such judgments is rather variable.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times">Carl Mills</FONT>
</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>