On the informativity of different measures of linguistic acceptability
- This article deals with the claim that the MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION (ME) method of gathering acceptability judgments produces data that are more informative for linguists than binary or n-point scale judgments. We performed three acceptability-rating experiments that directly compared ME data to binary and seven-point scale data. The results clearly falsify the hypothesis that data gathered by the ME method carry a larger amount of information about the acceptability of a given linguistic phenomenon. The three measures are largely equivalent with respect to informativity. Moreover, ME judgments are shown to be more liable to producing spurious variance under certain circumstances.*
| Author details: | Thomas Weskott, Gisbert FanselowORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0097-8507 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Language : journal of the Linguistic Society of America |
| Publisher: | Linguistic Society of America |
| Place of publishing: | Washington |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first publication: | 2011 |
| Publication year: | 2011 |
| Release date: | 2017/03/26 |
| Tag: | acceptability judgments; empirical syntax; informativity; magnitude estimation |
| Volume: | 87 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Number of pages: | 25 |
| First page: | 249 |
| Last Page: | 273 |
| Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |
