An acceptability judgment task, also called acceptability rating task, is a common method in empirical
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
to gather information about the internal
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
of speakers of a language.
Acceptability and grammaticality
The goal of acceptability rating studies is to gather insights into the mental grammars of participants. As the
grammaticality
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...
of a linguistic construction is an abstract construct that cannot be accessed directly, this type of tasks is usually not called grammaticality, but acceptability judgment. This can be compared to intelligence. Intelligence is an abstract construct that cannot be measured directly. What can be measured are the outcomes of specific test items. The result of one item, however, is not very telling. Instead,
IQ tests
An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from a set of standardized tests or subtests designed to assess human intelligence. The abbreviation "IQ" was coined by the psychologist William Stern for the German term ''Intelligenzqu ...
consist of several items building a score. Similarly, in acceptability rating studies, grammatical constructions are measured through several items, i.e., sentences to be rated. This is also done to ensure that participants do not rate the meaning of a particular sentence.
The difference between acceptability and grammaticality is linked to the distinction between performance and
competence in
generative grammar
Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistic ...
.
Types
Several different types of acceptability rating tasks are used in linguistics. The most common tasks use
Likert scales. Forced choice and yes-no rating tasks are also common. Besides these classical test types, there are other, methods like thermometer judgments or magnitude estimation which have been argued to be more difficult to process for participants, however.
[Weskott, T. & Fanselow, G. (2011):On the informativity of different measures of linguistic acceptability. In: ''Language'', 87(2), 249-273.]
Further reading
*Bross, F. (2019)
Acceptability Ratings in Linguistics: A Practical Guide to Grammaticality Judgments, Data Collection, and Statistical Analysis. Version 1.0. Mimeo.*Myers, J. (2009): Syntactic Judgment Experiments. In: ''Language and Linguistics Compass'', 3(1), 406-423.
*Podesva, R. J. & Sharma, D. (eds.) (2013): ''Research Methods in Linguistics''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Schütze, C. T. (2016): ''The Empirical Base of Linguistics. Grammaticality Judgments and Linguistic Methodology.'' Berlin: Language Science Press.
*Sprouse, J. & Almeida, D. (2017): Design sensitivity and statistical power in acceptability judgment experiments. In: ''Glossa. A Journal of General Linguistics'', 2(1), 1-32.
*Sprouse, J., Schütze, C. T. & Almeida, D. (2013): A comparison of informal and formal acceptability judgments using a random sample from Linguistic Inquiry 2001-2010. In: ''Lingua'', 134, 219-248.
References
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Psycholinguistics
Quantitative linguistics
Linguistic research