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Setting the empirical record straight: Acceptability judgments appear to be reliable, robust, and replicable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2017

Jon Sprouse
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1145. jon.sprouse@uconn.eduwww.sprouse.uconn.edu
Diogo Almeida
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. diogo@nyu.eduhttp://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/academics/faculty/diogo-almeida.html

Abstract

Branigan & Pickering (B&P) advocate the use of syntactic priming to investigate linguistic representations and argue that it overcomes several purported deficiencies of acceptability judgments. While we recognize the merit of drawing attention to a potentially underexplored experimental methodology in language science, we do not believe that the empirical evidence supports B&P's claims about acceptability judgments. We present the relevant evidence.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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