Acceptability Judgment Research Articles

Disagreements do not automatically raise the standard of precision

Speakers often choose to utter imprecise sentences that, albeit felicitous, are, strictly speaking, false (e.g., using 'This bottle is empty’ to describe a bottle with a bit of water in it). The acceptability of an imprecise utterance hinges on the standard of precision (SoP), a discourse parameter that governs how much imprecision is tolerated in a context. Previous theoretical accounts (e.g., Lewis 1979, Klecha 2018) have argued that metalinguistic denials that target the assertability of an imprecise utterance (e.g., ‘No, this bottle is not empty!’) more or less force accommodation to a higher SoP. The present study investigates the nature of this accommodation process. In particular, we ask whether metalinguistic disagreements result in an automatic update of the SoP. In two acceptability judgment experiments, we show that imprecise utterances are not deemed unacceptable when embedded in a disagreement dialogue. Our findings instead suggest that metalinguistic denials act as a request to raise the SoP and that any potential updates ought to be signaled overtly in subsequent conversational moves.

Studying the interplay of context and semantic content in the interpretation of adversative conjunctions with eye-tracking

The French adversative connective mais, much like its English counterpart but, takes two conjuncts and indicates that they stand in some kind of opposition. The nature of this opposition is often discussed in the existing literature of adversatives. Using an eyetracking experiment, we look at where and when this opposition appears to be manifested in a sentence reading task, using superiority comparatives sentences that appear degraded without a supportive context, as well as inferiority comparatives that do not seem to require such specific contextual information. We presented participants (n = 28) with four types of sentences, differing in the form of comparative, and in the information provided by the context. Some contexts contained a pivot property to help readers access the opposition of the two conjuncts, while others were neutral in that regard. Eye movements were recorded with a 250Hz Tobii Pro Fusion eyetracker, and mixed effect models were used to analyze the following eyetracking metrics : total fixation time and regression probability for the whole sentences, as well as first-fixation duration, first-gaze duration, regression-path duration, regressions-out and regressions-in for each individual words. Even if the helping context is shown to lower negative acceptability judgment on sentences with mais plus (Winterstein et al. 2014), we found no context effect in online reading processing, finding instead a persisting effect of the less/more dichotomy in all chosen measures, sometimes before fixation of those words, pointing towards a parafoveal effect of the aforementioned dichotomy, which merits closer look in future work.

English loan verbs in Jordanian Arabic: morphological integration and speaker acceptability judgments

PurposeThe present study examines how Jordanian Arabic (JA) speakers perceive the borrowing of English verbs in JA. These borrowings occur by two main strategies: morphological integration into the JA verb forms by direct insertion or pairing of loan words with a light verb such as ʕamal “do” to facilitate the borrowing, e.g. ʕamal diliit “delete” (literally “do a delete”).Design/methodology/approachSpeaker perceptions were gathered through interviews with native JA-speaking university students. Each interview consisted of two parts. First, speakers rated the acceptability of integrated verbs, in both their base form and their reflexive alternate. Second, after being presented with proposed integrated forms of verbs most used in the light verb construction (LVC), speakers answered questions about the potential integrability of these unintegrated verbs and the factors that affect it.FindingsResults of the interviews show that JA speakers prefer integrated loan verbs in their base forms over their reflexive alternates. Most speakers were unwilling to accept proposed integrated forms of the verbs they use in the LVC, citing concerns such as infrequency of use in the community and perceived phonological clashes between the English words and JA.Originality/valueThe integration of loan verbs in Arabic has received limited attention. This study aims to expand our understanding of how loan verbs are integrated in JA and adds a new angle by exploring how speakers perceive the integration process.

EFL Lexical Knowledge Depth: Proficiency Level and Order of Acquisition Parameters

The study at hand attempts to trace the development of three EFL lexical knowledge depth aspects - meaning, synonymy and collocation- across three academic levels- high school, second and fourth-year university. It aims to trace any possible “order of development” for the three linguistic knowledge aspects. The second objective of the study is to determine whether proficiency level affects the development of the three lexical knowledge aspects. The linguistic tasks used for data collection are translation, acceptability judgment and multiple choice. The study has found that the connectivity between L1 and EFL mental lexicons affects the three lexical knowledge aspects and tends to decrease relatively as the academic level of the learners increases. Second, the research has revealed a noticeable “order” of acquisition between the three lexical aspects, though not a very strong one. Such findings are of pivotal importance for materials and syllabus designers as well as for L2/FL teachers.

Modulating motion event categorization through brief training: Meaning-focused versus form-focused instructional conditions

Abstract There is evidence that learning a second language (L2) can shift cognition toward that predicted for the L2 and that this effect might vary with L2 proficiency, age of acquisition, length of immersion, etc. Here we explore the previously neglected variable of language instructional conditions. Participants categorized motion events in a triads-matching task after being trained on two novel linguistic labels highlighting (in)transitivity through one of three instructional conditions. Participants who learned the relevant knowledge under a meaning-focused instructional condition (memorizing meanings of exemplar sentences) showed a higher likelihood of categorizing based on motion (in)transitivity immediately after training than a control group; those who learned under a required rule search instructional condition showed this effect only after additional practice; while those who learned through another type of form-focused instructional condition (direct metalinguistic explanation) did not show this effect even after such practice. These differences were obtained despite the fact that the three groups were matched on awareness of the target system at the level of understanding and near-perfect performance on a grammaticality judgment task. The findings are discussed in terms of the depth of processing in instructed SLA and models of language–cognition interactions.

The Role of Aspect During Deverbal Word Processing in Greek

Deverbal formations in Greek, e.g. miˈrazo ‘to distribute’ < ˈmirazma ‘distributing’ are considered morphologically complex lexical items. Previous psycholinguistic studies in Greek and English already highlighted the importance of lexical category and argument structure of the base verb in the processing of deverbal pseudowords violating constraints pertaining to these properties. A similar study in Slovenian brought into light the role of aspectual properties of the base verb during deverbal word processing. The present study revisits the role of aspect in morphological processing of deverbal word formations by looking at Greek. To this end, an offline acceptability judgement task and an online lexical decision task were conducted using different types of pseudowords, violating derivational rules. Results provide evidence that aspect affects deverbal pseudoword processing in Greek. Aspectual rules have a distinct role in relation to categorial and argument structure ones for the suffix that creates formations with unambiguous, eventive readings and which has clear event implications but not for other suffixes. The current study extends the literature to include the role of this feature in the processing of deverbal formations.

Contextualizing code-switching: testing the effects of reggaetón labels and listening frequency in an Acceptability Judgment Task

Contextualizing code-switching: testing the effects of reggaetón labels and listening frequency in an Acceptability Judgment Task

An experimental investigation of &lt;em&gt;wh-&lt;/em&gt;dependencies in four island types in Romanian

This paper gauges the acceptability of wh-extraction from four island types in Romanian, an understudied language in this respect. Linguistic theories predict wh-dependencies to be unacceptable when the gap is located inside adjuncts, complex NPs, embedded interrogative clauses, or subjects. After reviewing different theoretical approaches to island phenomena and experimental evidence from other Romance languages, we report on two acceptability judgment experiments, adapted from Sprouse et al.’s (2016) experiments for Italian. In order to test (conditional) adjunct, complex NP, and interrogative (whether) islands, the experiments crossed two factors: distance (between filler and gap, short vs. long) and construction (island vs. non-island). The investigation of subject islands required an alternative design for reasons specific to the structure of Romance languages. To test subject islands, we again followed the design used by Sprouse et al. (2016) and crossed the factors gap site (subject vs. object) and complexity (simple vs. complex). In line with predictions from most linguistic theories and the results from experimental work on Romance languages, we find significant island effects for each construction type. The subject island effect is weaker than the others, which may be an artifact of the alternative research design. Moreover, we discuss how our data from the adjunct and interrogative island item sets pattern in a somewhat unexpected manner. The present study provides initial experimental evidence for island sensitivity in Romanian bare wh-questions, which can serve as an empirical anchor for future investigations.

Exploring nonlocal subject–verb agreement in L2 English: The role of proficiency and language experience

ABSTRACT This study explores the effects of second language (L2) proficiency and the extent of exposure to the L2 on how L2 learners process nonlocal subject–verb agreement in English. A group of 61 adult Tagalog–English bilinguals, who began learning English before the age of 11, and a control group of 23 native speakers of English completed acceptability judgment and self-paced reading tasks. In the acceptability judgment task, both groups exhibited sensitivity to agreement violations, indicating their knowledge of subject–verb agreement in English. In the self-paced reading task, the L2 group exhibited delayed sensitivity to agreement violations compared to native speakers. Notably, the processing patterns of L2 learners were significantly influenced by their L2 proficiency in English. In contrast, the effect of language exposure was not significant. These results indicate that the ability of L2 speakers to compute nonlocal agreement in English is predominantly shaped by their proficiency. These findings suggest that while both L1 and L2 processing rely on fundamentally similar underlying mechanisms, L2 parsing appears to be more closely tied to language proficiency.

Interaction between acceptability and probability: Evidence from predicate agreement with a coordinated subject in Russian

The study aims to establish whether language models trained on unlabeled text data can parametrize agreement variation. We compared the acceptability judgments made by native speakers and the probability metrics predicted by the language model ruBERT without fine-tuning. As a specific linguistic phenomenon, we considered predicate agreement with a coordinated subject in Russian. We analyzed in detail which syntactic, morphological, and semantic factors influenced sentence acceptability and probability. The experimental data enables us to reveal the role of each factor and their interaction. Besides the standard logarithmic probability, we considered sentence length and unigram probability. We assumed that the model would assign the highest probability to the most acceptable agreement strategy. However, our hypothesis was not confirmed: the correlation between probability and acceptability is lower for sentences with agreement variation than for sentences without variation. The linear position — the subject-predicate order and the conjuncts’ order — turned out to be the only factor which equally influences the acceptability and probability of a sentence. If the gender features of conjuncts match, the acceptability of singular agreement increases while the probability does not change. The animacy of conjuncts and the predicate symmetry influence neither acceptability nor probability. Our research demonstrates that ruBERT cannot be used to parametrize predicate agreement with a coordinated subject. The acceptability of a sentence is based on subtle linguistic contrasts which are not significant for the computer evaluation of its probability.

A comparison of two dynamic assessment situations for detecting development language disorder in monolingual and bilingual children

ABSTRACT Bilingual children’s language skills are strongly influenced by exposure to each of their languages, among other linguistic, environmental, and cognitive factors. In the speech and language therapy clinic, it is difficult to disentangle developmental language disorders from insufficient exposure. Dynamic assessment, which directly tests the learning potential of children, offers a promising solution for this dilemma. This study compares the clinical potential of two dynamic assessment situations, varying amount of adult mediation (autonomous computer game vs. interactive story reading with graduated cues), as well as item types (nouns, verbs, and inflections in sentences) and linguistic modalities and tasks (comprehension – word picture matching and acceptability judgement, production – free recall and picture naming). Forty-nine French monolingual and French-Portuguese bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder, aged 5;0 to 7;11 years, were include in the final analyses. Using Lasso regressions, we were able to determine which variables best explain the presence of disorder. A combination of all item types and predominantly receptive tasks, mostly from the interactive situation, was retained for very high classification accuracy (up to 100% sensitivity and 96% specificity). Language status showed no influence, which encourages the use of dynamic assessment in the context of speech and language assessment with bilingual children. This study adds to evidence that dynamic assessment is a promising task for identifying bilingual and monolingual children with developmental language disorder, particularly when the situation involves interaction with graduated cues.

Bilingual language experience and code-switching acceptability judgments: A constructive replication of the work by Stadthagen-González et al. (2019), Balam et al. (2020), and Stadthagen-González et al. (2018)

Aims and objectives: While a significant body of research has examined bilinguals’ preferences with respect to the acceptability of different structures in intrasentential code-switching, this line of work has largely ignored the potential effect of language experience on bilinguals’ judgments. Within bilingual language experience, two particular variables have garnered significant attention: language dominance and code-switching experience. The current study presents a constructive replication of three prior studies and examines the potential modulating role of language experience. Design/methodology: Seventy-one Spanish–English bilinguals participated in a constructive replication of three previously published studies. Experiment 1, replicating the study by Stadthagen-González et al. (2019), examines comparative judgments of noun–adjective order. Experiment 2, replicating the work of Balam et al. (2020), analyzes bilingual verbs. Experiment 3, replicating the study by Stadthagen-González et al. (2018), examines the adjacency condition. Bilinguals provided code-switching judgments via a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task and information about their language experience via a language-dominance questionnaire and a code-switching experience questionnaire. Data and analysis: Relative rankings of the different bilingual constructions, using Thurstone’s law of comparative judgments, allowed for comparison with previous studies. The effect of language dominance and code-switching experience was assessed using binomial logistic regressions. Findings/conclusions: Broad agreement with results from each of the replicated studies was found. In addition, results show a significant impact of language dominance on acceptability judgments across all three experiments and an impact of code-switching experience in one of the three experiments. Originality: This study responds directly to an ongoing call for replication studies in the field of bilingualism and is among the first to consider the role of prior language experiences on acceptability judgments. Significance/implications: The strong replicability of prior results serves to support prior findings in the literature. Moreover, this study highlights the potential impact of prior linguistic experiences, including language dominance and code-switching experience, on bilingual behaviors.

The relationship between brain structure and function during novel grammar learning across development

Abstract In this study, we explored the relationship between developmental differences in gray matter structure and grammar learning ability in 159 Dutch-speaking individuals (8 to 25 yr). The data were collected as part of a recent large-scale functional MRI study (Menks WM, Ekerdt C, Lemhöfer K, Kidd E, Fernández G, McQueen JM, Janzen G. Developmental changes in brain activation during novel grammar learning in 8–25-year-olds. Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2024;66:101347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2024.101347) in which participants implicitly learned Icelandic morphosyntactic rules and performed a grammaticality judgment task in the scanner. Behaviorally, Menks et al. (2024) showed that grammaticality judgment task performance increased steadily from 8 to 15.4 yr, after which age had no further effect. We show in the current study that this age-related grammaticality judgment task performance was negatively related to cortical gray matter volume and cortical thickness in many clusters throughout the brain. Hippocampal volume was positively related to age-related grammaticality judgment task performance and L2 (English) vocabulary knowledge. Furthermore, we found that grammaticality judgment task performance, L2 grammar proficiency, and L2 vocabulary knowledge were positively related to gray matter maturation within parietal regions, overlapping with the functional MRI clusters that were reported previously in Menks et al. (2024) and which showed increased brain activation in relation to grammar learning. We propose that this overlap in functional and structural results indicates that brain maturation in parietal regions plays an important role in second language learning.

Bilinguals’ sensitivity to specificity and genericity: evidence from implicit and explicit knowledge

Abstract The present paper investigates whether school-aged French-English bilingual children’s implicit and explicit knowledge of article use is affected by cross-linguistic influence (CLI) during online and offline sentence comprehension. The studies focus on the encoding of plural and mass nouns in specific and generic contexts. We also explore whether individual measures of oral proficiency, language exposure and age play a role in the children’s performance. Forty-three 8-to-10-year-old French-English bilingual children took part in a Self-Paced Reading task, a Grammaticality Judgement task and a Cloze test in their two languages. Overall, CLI was observed across tasks in English and French. These findings suggest that CLI can be bi-directional and tap into school-aged bilinguals’ implicit and explicit representations during sentence comprehension and production. The data also makes a new contribution to our understanding of the relative amount of language exposure, oral proficiency and age on CLI.

The distribution of focus and the mapping between syntax and information structure

Abstract The availability of preverbal focus in Romance is still the subject of controversy in the relevant literature. In this paper, we investigate the distribution of information focus in three Romance languages: Catalan, Spanish and Italian. The main goal is to understand if and to what extent information focus can occur preverbally in these three languages. To this end, we applied a new technique (Questions with a Delayed Answer) to elicit both production data and acceptability judgements. Our results show that preverbal foci are almost never produced in free speech under elicitation but are judged as acceptable by native speakers in rating tasks. The acceptability of preverbal foci, however, is subject to variation: they are more acceptable in Spanish but less so in Catalan and Italian. We interpret this difference across the three Romance languages in the light of the hypothesis formulated in Leonetti (2017), according to which Catalan and especially Italian are more restrictive than Spanish with respect to the mapping between syntax and information structure. While all languages resort to the dedicated word order with a more transparent information-structure partition for a focal subject (i.e. VS), Spanish is more permissive in also allowing a narrow focus interpretation of the subject in an SV order.

Effects of input frequency and microvariation on knowledge of negative inversion in L2 English

Abstract The present study investigates whether L2 learners of English distinguish between (un)grammatical word orders after fronted negative adverbials to identify negative inversion. Previous research on transfer and resetting of verb second (V2) in L1 German–L2 English is extended to explore residual V2 in the form of negative inversion. An acceptability judgment task elicited sentence ratings from advanced German-speaking learners of English for fronted negative adverbials with local and sentential scope. In addition, corpus frequency data of these negative adverbials were related to the learners’ ratings in order to investigate the potential role of input effects. Results suggest that linguistic constraints on microvariation with respect to fronting negative adverbials are broadly in place for learners at this proficiency level, as the scope of fronted negation has an effect on acceptability of negative inversion. Continued significant differences in acceptability judgements of advanced learners compared to native speakers indicate, however, that learners have not completely converged on the target pattern of microvariation. This is related to frequency and reliability of input.

A translation-matched, experimental comparison of three types of wh-island effects in Spanish and English

According to the historical empirical consensus in the field, wh-argument extraction from embedded wh-questions gives rise to island effects in English, but not in Spanish. This observation – which was important for the development of a parameters-based theory of cross-linguistic variation in islands – has recently been challenged by experimental studies showing wh-island effects in both languages. However, these studies typically employ different materials and experimental conditions between languages, limiting direct comparison. Our study addresses this limitation by testing wh-islands in both English and Spanish with translation-matched materials. We present twelve acceptability judgment experiments with approximately 100 participants per experiment. In each language, we examine wh-argument extraction from three wh-clause types (introduced by whether, why and when) under two matrix verb types (know and ask), amounting to six wh-islands that are relevant to assess the reported contrasts. We test (i) for the presence or absence of wh-island effects in the two languages, (ii) for a gradient contrast in effect size, and (iii) for evidence of increased individual variation in Spanish as compared to English. We find (i) that wh-island effects are present in both English and Spanish, (ii) that they are rather large in both languages and larger in Spanish for most wh-island types, and (iii) that Spanish does not show more individual variation in wh-island effects than English. Our results speak against the cross-linguistic contrast as originally proposed, suggesting that its use as evidence for theories that encode cross-linguistic variation in wh-island effects might need to be reconsidered.

An analysis of dialogue repair in virtual assistants.

Conversational user interfaces have transformed human-computer interaction by providing nearly real-time responses to queries. However, misunderstandings between the user and system persist. This study explores the significance of interactional language in dialogue repair between virtual assistants and users by analyzing interactions with Google Assistant and Siri in both English and Spanish, focusing on the assistants' utilization and response to the colloquial other-initiated repair strategy "huh?", which is prevalent as a human-human dialogue repair strategy. Findings revealed ten distinct assistant-generated repair strategies, but an inability to replicate human-like strategies such as "huh?". Despite slight variations in user acceptability judgments among the two surveyed languages, results indicated an overall hierarchy of preference towards specific dialogue repair strategies, with a notable disparity between the most preferred strategies and those frequently used by the assistants. These findings highlight discrepancies in how interactional language is utilized in human-computer interaction, underscoring the need for further research on the impact of interactional elements among different languages to advance the development of conversational user interfaces across domains, including within human-robot interaction.

Rethinking logical disagreements: a critique of verbalism and a normative constraints approach

Logical pluralism posits that various conceptions of logic can coexist, suggesting that all acceptable judgments about the validity of an argument are valid without rivalry. This view implies that disagreements between logical theories are merely verbal. Contrary to Kouri Kissel’s proposal of metalinguistic negotiation as an explanation for logical disagreements, this article challenges the notion that such disputes are purely verbal. Employing inference to the best explanation, the author argues in favor of normative restrictions on belief in premises and conclusions as a more compelling explanation for logical disagreements.

Verb semantics in second language French: Transitivity, unergativity & unaccusativity

This study investigates the acquisition of verb semantics by L1 Arabic-L2 French learners. We examine the effect of proficiency and the L1 transfer on the interlanguage of beginning and advanced adult learners of L2 French. We used a context-based acceptability judgment task with correction to test transitivity, unergativity, pure unaccusativity and alternating unaccusativity using (un)-grammatical illustrative sentences that are similar or different in the two languages. We tested two groups of beginning and advanced learners of L2 French and a group of French native speakers. We used non-parametric tests for within- and between-group comparisons. The results confirmed the influence of the L1 transfer and proficiency on the performance of the beginner and advanced learners respectively. The L2 beginners had instances of under-causativization affecting transitive verbs and over-passivization marking unergative verbs. Further, pure unaccusative verbs are prone to over-passivization while alternating unaccusative verbs presents substantial under-causativization and over-passivization. Comparatively, the L2 advanced learners attained nativelike proficiency on transitivity and unergativity. However, under-causativization affects alternating unaccusative verbs and over-passivization pure unaccusative verbs. The study fills a gap in the empirical research on the acquisition of verb semantics in L2 French by Arabic speakers.