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23 results

Page 1 of 2

  • 9 - Island Effects

  • from Part II - Experimental Studies of Specific Phenomena
  • Edited by Grant Goodall, University of California, San Diego
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax
    Published online:
    16 December 2021
    Print publication:
    09 December 2021, pp 227-257

  • Summary

    Island effects are one of the most studied phenomena in experimental syntax. There are at least two reasons for this. First, they are a terrific case study for a number of foundational questions in linguistics, covering topics such as the complexity of the grammar, the variation of languages, the dynamics of sentences processing, and the acquisition of abstract constraints. Second, they are a valuable case study for illustrating the benefits of formal experiments, such as defining an effect, isolating the source of an effect, and increasing the precision of the empirical bases of linguistic theories. In this chapter, we illustrate these benefits of formal experiments for island effects by reviewing the major empirical contributions that formal experiments have made to theories of island effects over the past two decades. Along the way, we also provide a relatively comprehensive list of articles that have used formal experiments to explore island effects.

  • Gender asymmetries in ellipsis: An experimental comparison of markedness and frequency accounts in English

  • JON SPROUSE, TROY MESSICK, JONATHAN DAVID BOBALJIK
  • Journal:
    Journal of Linguistics / Volume 58 / Issue 2 / April 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    12 November 2021, pp. 345-379
    Print publication:
    April 2022

  • Bobaljik & Zocca (2011) argue that ellipsis reveals the existence of (at least) two classes of gender-paired nouns: in the actor/actress class, the grammatically feminine form is specified for conceptual gender, while the unaffixed form is unspecified, exemplifying the classic markedness asymmetry (Jakobson 1932); in the prince/princess class, both forms are specified for conceptual gender. Here we test two theories of this asymmetry: one that encodes markedness in the linguistic representation (e.g. Merchant 2014, Sudo & Spathas 2016, and Saab 2019), and one that traces the asymmetry to differences in the relative frequency of the forms in each pair (Haspelmath 2006). The frequency approach predicts that the size of the asymmetries (as quantified by acceptability judgments) will correlate with the size of the relative frequency ratio for each pair. We test this prediction in two experiments: the first is a curated set of 16 pairs in English, and the second is a test of 58 pairs that nearly exhausts such pairs in English. We use frequencies from COCA (Davies 2008) to test the prediction of the frequency approach. Our results suggest that the relative frequency hypothesis is not an empirically adequate competitor for the explanation of gender asymmetries.

  • 3 - Judgment data

  • from Part I - Data collection
  • Edited by Robert J. Podesva, Stanford University, California, Devyani Sharma, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book:
    Research Methods in Linguistics
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 27-50

  • Summary

    Preliminaries

    This chapter covers what have traditionally been called grammaticality judgments in linguistics (which are more aptly referred to as acceptability judgments – see below). We examine such judgments from several angles, with the goal of assisting researchers in deciding whether and how to use this kind of data. Our goal in this chapter is to provide an introduction to the major themes that arise when using acceptability judgments as a data source for the construction of linguistic theories. Importantly, this chapter will not be a step-by-step guide for constructing a particular experiment, as the curious reader can find several fine introductions to the mechanics of experiment construction and analysis elsewhere (e.g., Chapters 7 and 8, and Cowart 1997). Instead, we intend this chapter to be an introduction to the theory underlying the methodology of acceptability judgment collection. Most of what follows will involve discussion of syntactic well-formedness judgments, because that is where the greatest amount of research about judgment data has been focused, but we believe that many of our remarks are also relevant for judgments at other levels of linguistic representation. Specific considerations regarding other sorts of judgments can be found elsewhere in this volume. For example, judgments about the lexicon and phonotactic well-formedness are generally gathered in the language documentation process (see Chapter 4); judgments about morphological processes might be gathered using the experimental methods that predominate in psycholinguistics (see Chapter 8); judgments about sociolinguistic variables might be gathered via a survey (see Chapter 6). For considerations specific to semantic judgments, see Matthewson (2004) and Chemla and Spector (2011).

Experimental Syntax and Island Effects
  • Edited by Jon Sprouse, Norbert Hornstein
  • Published online:
    05 October 2013
    Print publication:
    17 October 2013
  • This volume brings together cutting-edge experimental research from leaders in the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics to explore the nature of a phenomenon that has long been central to syntactic theory - 'island effects'. The chapters in this volume draw upon recent methodological advances in experimental methods in syntax, also known as 'experimental syntax', to investigate the underlying cognitive mechanisms that give rise to island effects. This volume presents a comprehensive empirical review of a contemporary debate in the field by including contributions from researchers representing a variety of points of view on the nature of island effects. This book is ideal for students and researchers interested in cutting-edge experimental techniques in linguistics, psycholinguistics and psychology.

  • 26 - Syntax and the brain

  • from Part VI - Syntax and the external interfaces
  • Edited by Marcel den Dikken, City University of New York
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax
    Published online:
    05 August 2013
    Print publication:
    25 July 2013, pp 971-1005

  • Summary

    The initial breakthrough in our understanding of natural language quantification came with Frege's insight that quantifiers are operators prefixed to an open sentence. The study of quantification within the generative syntactic tradition since Montague can be characterized as a search for principled ways of regulating scopal dependencies and interactions. This chapter focuses on quantified noun phrases and wh expressions. It discusses the phenomena of quantifier split and quantifier float, showing how the challenges posed by syntactic deviations from the normal form of quantification. The chapter also deals with the wh-scope marking and wh-copy constructions, illustrating their special properties by comparing them to regular wh-extraction. Thornton and Crain report an acquisition study that provides interesting corroboration of the division between wh-scope marking and wh-copying constructions. Much of the work in the domain of long-distance wh-dependency has focused on the nature of quantification involved.

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