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2 - Response Methods in Acceptability Experiments

from Part I - General Issues in Acceptability Experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

By
Sam Featherston
Edited by
Grant Goodall
Grant Goodall
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Summary

This chapter attempts to give an overview of current methods of gathering controlled acceptability judgments, noting what parameters of variation there are.Issues dealt with include the ways that the stimulus can be presented, the task assigned to the informant, the criterion for acceptability which the informant is instructed to use, and the format in which the response is delivered.A particular focus is the issue of the scale type on which the judgments are given.The chapter argues for more sophisticated (and admittedly) complex scales, and presents the case for anchoring the scale points with lingustic examples in order to ground the scale intersubjectively. These anchor points can be provided by the use of standard items instantiating cardinal well-formedness values, such as those proposed in Gerbrich et al. (2019).

Keywords

stimulus modalityacceptabilityjudgment tasksacceptability scaleperceived well-formednessspeeded judgmentsn-point scalemagnitude estimationthermometer judgmentsscale anchoring
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax , pp. 39 - 61
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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