Gradient acceptability and linguistic theory /

• Κύριος συγγραφέας: Francis, Elaine 1971- (συγγραφέας)
• Μορφή: Βιβλίο
• Γλώσσα: English
• Έκδοση: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2022.
• Σειρά: Oxford linguistics
• Θέματα: Γραμματική, Συγκριτική και γενική > Προτάσεις; Γραμματική, Συγκριτική και γενική > Μορφοσύνταξη; Αποδεκτότητα (Γλωσσολογία)

 "In Gradient Acceptability and Linguistic Theory, Elaine J. Francis examines a challenging problem at the intersection of theoretical linguistics and the psychology of language: the problem of interpreting gradient judgments of sentence acceptability in relation to theories of grammatical knowledge. This problem is important because acceptability judgments constitute the primary source of data on which such theories have been built, despite being susceptible to various extra-grammatical factors. Through a review of experimental and corpus-based research on a variety of syntactic phenomena and an in-depth examination of two case studies, Francis argues for two main positions. The first is that converging evidence from online comprehension tasks, elicited production tasks, and corpora of naturally-occurring discourse can help determine the sources of variation in acceptability judgments and narrow down the range of plausible theoretical interpretations. The second is that the interpretation of judgment data depends crucially on one's theoretical commitments and assumptions, especially with respect to the nature of the syntax-semantics interface and the choice of either a categorical or a gradient notion of grammaticality. The theoretical frameworks considered in this book include derivational theories (e.g. Minimalism, Principles and Parameters), constraint-based theories (e.g. Sign-based Construction Grammar, Simpler Syntax), competition-based theories (e.g. Stochastic Optimality Theory, Decathlon Model), and usage-based approaches. While showing that acceptability judgment data are typically compatible with the assumptions of various theoretical frameworks, Francis argues that some gradient phenomena are best captured within frameworks that permit soft constraints-non-categorical grammatical constraints that encode the conventional preferences of language users"-- 

 1 The problem of gradient acceptability -- 2 Theories of grammatical knowledge in relation to formal syntactic and non-syntactic explanations -- 3 On distinguishing formal syntactic constraints from other aspects of linguistic knowledge -- 4 On distinguishing formal syntactic constraints from processing constraints -- 5 On the relationship between corpus frequency and acceptability -- 6 Relative clause extraposition and PP extraposition in English and German -- 7 Resumptive pronouns in Hebrew, Cantonese, and English relative clauses -- 8 Gradient acceptability, methodological diversity, and theoretical interpretation