Acceptability Judgment Research Articles

Variation in the Usage of Relativisation Strategies in Migrant and Non-migrant English Speakers

ABSTRACT This study considers the use of adnominal restrictive relative clauses based on data from an acceptability rating task. We asked non-migrant native speakers (n = 24) of English and migrant native speakers (n = 28) of English to judge three different types of relative clauses. Results indicated that these speakers rate the relative markers that and zero more positively in line with the current situation in Present-day English. 1 The similar behaviour in the rating shows that major driving forces of language variation such as colloquialisation and Americanisation are stronger than other forces such as language contact. The similarities in the usage of relativisation strategies observed between contemporary Englishes and language competences of migrant and non-migrant speakers support the emergence of a new variety of English similar to other documented varieties that emerged in comparable contexts. 2

Metaphors across cultures

Abstract The way and degree to which people in different cultures consider a metaphor to be appropriate, acceptable, or apt has been the subject of controversy in recent decades. According to structure-mapping models, metaphors are understood by mapping relations from the base domain to relations in the target domain. However, previous research lacks literature on cross-cultural contexts and differences in the degree of acceptability of metaphors in different cultures. To address this gap, in this study we examined cross-cultural differences in metaphor aptness among participants from three different cultures. We developed two questionnaires, an acceptability judgment-task and a parallel-relation test using the COCA (English), PLDB (Persian), and KorAP (German) corpus databases. The results suggest striking differences in the acceptance of a metaphor in different cultures where the vehicle of a metaphor is not present. It is suggested that metaphors are considered apt through the process of categorizing the salient features that are considered structurally similar. This idea is partially consistent with studies that support class-inclusion models which suggest that hearers place the topic of a metaphor in a category in which the vehicle fits. The absence of a domain (whether topic or vehicle) may lead to unacceptability of a metaphor. Lack of cultural background in the use of these words hinders the process of finding a salient feature between them and the counter domain in a metaphor to form an appropriate alignment.

Ordering preferences in Ukrainian multiple <i>wh</i>-fronting

We present the first systematic study of ordering restrictions in Ukrainian multiple wh-fronting (MWF) constructions, examining the effects of grammatical relation, case and animacy. Using an acceptability judgment task with pair-list primes, we tested the acceptability of Superiority-obeying and Superiority-violating questions with two wh-arguments. We found that Ukrainian speakers exhibit two distinct patterns with respect to Superiority: one group of speakers accepted Superiority violations while the other did not. Both groups, however, allowed free word order with wh-prepositional phrases and the lexical item ščo ‘what’. We conclude that these two patterns represent two distinct varieties of Ukrainian which differ in Superiority in matrix MWF constructions.

THE CLITIC LI AT THE SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY INTERFACE: AN EXPERIMENTALLY INFORMED ACCOUNT

Among Serbo-Croatian (SC) clitics, the interrogative li seems to be unique in showing a peculiar type of sensitivity with respect to the type of host it cliticizes (on)to. Whereas li is unproblematically hosted by a finite verb, when hosted by an l-participle, the outputs are treated as fully ungrammatical. Be it in syntax or in phonology, current accounts in the literature overgenerate by predicting the ungrammatical constructions to be grammatical, and undergenerate by predicting grammatical outputs in SC to be ungrammatical. Moreover, native speakers’ judgements regarding the l-participle li construction suggest a more gradient judgment than standardly assumed in the literature. We present results of a large-scale experiment undertaken not only because of the unclarities regarding the acceptability judgments we encountered for l-participle li, but, first and foremost, because of the lack of prior empirical investigations or established baseline of acceptability in the domain that has, otherwise, been a prolific and important domain for theorizing in SC. On the theoretical side, we argue that the crux of the solution is not due to the defectiveness of li (as previously argued), but due to the [-finite] nature of participles. Testing our hypothesis against the data obtained in a systematic manner, we further demonstrate that the gradedness in (un)grammaticality judgments are accounted for by analyzing the interplay as well as the tensions that arise at the syntax-phonology interface.

It Costs To Exist: Acceptability Judgments of the Temporal Concord of the Auxiliary Verbs You and Hui in Taiwan Mandarin.

The mechanisms underlying the processing of the temporal reference of a sentence are still unexplored. Most of the previous psycholinguistic studies used the temporal concord violation between deictic time adverbs and tense marking on the verb to investigate this issue. They found that processing past tense marking is more difficult than non-past tense, indicated by lower accuracy rates and/or longer reaction time. However, it is not clear whether this complexity is due to tense marking or the temporal reference it denotes. This paper examines this issue with a judgment acceptability experiment in Taiwan Mandarin, which is analyzed as a tenseless language. The two modal auxiliary verbs you and hui were placed after deictic past time adverbs (grammatical with you but not with hui) and deictic future time adverbs (grammatical with hui but not with you). The temporal concord violation of the auxiliary verb you led to higher acceptability rates but longer reaction time than hui, reflecting higher processing difficulties. This paper argues that these complexities are due to the existential-assertive meaning of you, which interplays with the meaning of the event described by the verb rendering the situation more or less likely to occur in the future. The computation of the temporal concord of hui, displaying a future sense meaning, is more straightforward and therefore easier to process. This suggests that the mechanisms responsible for temporal reference processing are of different nature depending on the semantics of the temporal marker in the sentence.

L2 acquisition of classifier reduplication in Chinese

This article investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of classifier reduplication in Chinese by Korean speakers and English speakers. Unlike the individuation function of simple classifiers, reduplicated classifiers express plurality. Yi-Cl-Cl encodes abundant plural and is associated with [plural, abundant] features, while Cl-Cl encodes distributive plural and is associated with [plural, distributive] features. Thirty-two English-speaking and thirty-five Korean-speaking learners of Chinese at advanced and intermediate Chinese proficiency levels were tested using a grammaticality judgment task and a truth value judgment task. The group and individual results show that, though great acquisition difficulties were encountered, both English and Korean speakers can eventually acquire the features associated with classifier reduplication. This empirical study contributes to the L2 theory of feature reassembly, by looking into the process of feature reassembly when the linguistic property is morphologically and semantically complex, and form-meaning transparency is low. This study also provides new data on the L2 acquisition of classifiers and plurality.

What contributes to fluent L2 speech? Examining cognitive and utterance fluency link with underlying L2 collocational processing speed and accuracy

AbstractSecond language (L2) fluency research has suggested that a range of linguistic knowledge and processing speed serve as cognitive fluency (CF) underlying L2 utterance fluency (UF). Building on prior CF-UF link studies, this study explored L2 collocational processing speed and accuracy as underlying CF measures. This study also explored the phrasal frequency effect on the relationship between collocational processing speed and UF to test whether the processing speed of higher-frequency collocations is more strongly related to UF. A total of 108 Japanese university students completed a phrasal acceptability judgment task with adjective–noun collocations pooled from the Academic Collocation List. Speech was elicited in an argumentative speech task, and UF measures were computed based on speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. The results revealed that the collocational processing speed was weakly tied to articulation rate and mid-clause and end-clause silent pause ratio (rho = |.271–.322|), while the collocational processing accuracy was weakly to moderately tied to most UF measures except filled pause ratio (rho = |.281–.368|). The collocation frequency moderated the relationship between the processing speed and UF, suggesting that high-frequency collocations served as a proxy for automaticity in speech production. Implications for CF-UF link research are discussed.

The Role of Partial Desemanticization in the Emergence of Grammatical Subsystems: The Case of Epistemic Modality in Northern Rural Jordanian Arabic

Desemanticization, a mechanism of language change, is either full or partial. The former is the total loss of the lexical content while developing a gram from a lexical source, whereas the latter is the reduction of the lexical content. One of the merits of partial desemanticization reported in the relevant literature is that the remaining lexical residue in a gram often determines its function, especially through metaphor and metonymy. The present paper, from a broader perspective, sheds light on the role of partial desemanticization in developing grammatical subsystems in natural languages. Based on an acceptability judgment task and the main synchronic characteristics of the target items, this paper argues that partial desemanticization is the underpinning factor in the grammaticalization of a possibility-denoting epistemic modality in northern rural Jordanian Arabic. Its role is manifested in the derivation of the target modal auxiliaries from their lexical counterparts. The content of their sources, mostly lexical, is not fully bleached out when they develop into modal auxiliaries. The semantic residue of the source in each grammaticalized modal auxiliary, in turn, causes the variation in use of these modal auxiliaries, and therefore inevitably leads to developing a possibility-denoting epistemic modality.

Bilingual children’s online processing of relative clauses

Abstract Long-distance dependencies such as relative clauses (RCs) are known to be vulnerable in heritage grammars (e.g., Montrul, 2008). Previous studies in RC comprehension have shown that heritage language (HL) children show similar comprehension to monolingual children (Jia & Paradis, 2020), while differential performance has also been found (Kidd et al., 2015). The present study investigates 11–13-year-old monolingual and German-dominant HL children’s real-time parsing strategies in subject relative clause (SRC) and object relative clause (ORC) processing in Greek. We conducted a self-paced listening task in Greek in which we manipulated the type of RC (subject vs. object), and the RC internal word order (canonical vs. scrambled). Our analyses revealed no significant group differences between HL and monolingual children. Both groups of children processed SRCs faster than ORCs on the critical RC verb segment. We also examined if case-marked pre-verbal NPs would facilitate the processing of ORC structures. Although children processed pre-verbal faster than post-verbal NPs, ORC structures with pre-verbal NPs received the lowest scores in the grammaticality judgment task. We discuss these findings on the grounds of Relativized Minimality (Friedmann et al., 2009) and Fodor and Inoue’s (2000) Diagnosis and Repair Model.

Effects of retrieval schedules on the acquisition of explicit, automatized-explicit, and implicit knowledge of L2 collocations

AbstractThis study investigates the effects of retrieval schedules on the acquisition of second language (L2) collocations. Chinese learners of English first studied 36 target verb-noun collocations using flashcards and form-meaning matching practice. Subsequently, the participants practiced retrieving the target collocations from memory, following either a massed (consecutive) or spaced schedule. After each retrieval attempt, corrective feedback was provided. The acquisition of L2 collocations was measured by near-immediate and 1-week delayed posttests that assessed explicit knowledge with an offline form recall task, automatized explicit knowledge using an online acceptability judgment task, and implicit knowledge with an online collocation priming (lexical decision) task. Results showed equal learning effects of massed and spaced retrieval at both posttests of explicit knowledge and the near-immediate posttest of automatized explicit knowledge. The spacing effect was observed for the implicit knowledge across the two posttests and the automatized explicit knowledge at the delayed posttest.

Chinese topic constructions are derived by movement: evidence from acceptability judgment experiments

Abstract Chinese, a topic-prominent language, abounds with gapped and gapless topic constructions. Several explanations of how topics are derived have been proposed, which fall into three categories: the base-generation approach, the mixed approach and the movement approach. In this study, we conducted two experiments to examine the island sensitivity of topic constructions in Chinese, bringing novel evidence to adjudicate the different approaches to topicalization in this language. The results indicate that island effects can be detected in both gapped and gapless topic constructions, which supports the movement approach to topic constructions in Chinese, making influential hypotheses such as the topic licensing condition and the topic interpretation condition dubious. Our findings also provide new evidence for the influential proposal that Merge is applied freely (Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz & Ken Hale (eds.), A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Chomsky, Noam. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures, 104–131. New York: Oxford University Press, Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On phases. In Robert Freidin, Carlos Otero & Maria Luisa Zubizarreta (eds.), Foundational issues in linguistic theory: Essays in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, 133–166. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130. 33–49).

On Pseudo-Coordination in the province of Catania

This paper discusses the preliminary results of an exploratory study based on acceptability judgments about Pseudo-Coordination (PseCo) as found in the province of Catania (Sicily). PseCo is a monoclausal verbal periphrasis where an inflected verb (V1), usually of motion, is followed by another inflected verb (V2) with an optional connecting element between them (cf. Giusti, Di Caro and Ross 2022). In western Sicilian varieties, the V1 GO can occur as an invariable form (i.e., va-, vo-, uo-, o- as in Oppigghju u pani ‘I go and fetch the bread’) prefixed to the V2. An online anonymous questionnaire was administered to 295 participants (180 female, 115 male; Age M: 20,95 years, Age SD: 2,73 years) to assess whether (i) PseCo with V1 GO in the present indicative is productive among younger speakers; (ii) different forms of invariable V1 GO can cooccur in one and the same variety. The results show that PseCo in the province of Catania is still vital among younger generation of speakers and that invariable V1 GO generally occurs in at least two different forms but with no particular semantic specialization.

The syntax of non-canonical coordination in Jordanian Arabic: An experimental investigation

Abstract Non-canonical coordination occurs when non-constituents are conjoined. Two major types of non-canonical coordination are gapping and non-constituent coordination (NCC). Non-canonical coordination has received interest for its relevance to core issues in syntax, such as constituency and phrase structure. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it provides empirical evidence for non-canonical coordination from Jordanian Arabic (JA) via an experimental investigation. Two acceptability judgment tasks (rating on a Likert scale) were designed to investigate the status of gapping and NCC in JA. A generalized linear model (GLM) was fit to the data, using the (glm) function from the mlogit package in R. There was a main effect of gapping (χ 2 = 13.203, p < 0.001) and NCC (χ 2 = 15.371, p < 0.001) on the acceptability of the constructions in the positive direction. Second, the article provides an analysis of the facts that is couched in terms of left-to-right syntax via a hybrid analysis that assumes that non-canonical coordination can have two sources: a complementizer phrase source and a vP source.

The Relevance of Unaccusativity to Possessive Datives

Abstract The possessive dative construction has been widely adopted as an unaccusativity diagnostic (Borer and Grodzinsky 1986). Gafter (2014) casts doubt on the relevance of unaccusativity to the acceptability of the construction. We ran a series of acceptability judgment experiments to investigate the validity of the possessive dative construction as an unaccusativity diagnostic, controlling for possible confounds such as animacy, definiteness, plausibility, lexical choice, type of possession and context salience. The experiments reveal that possessive datives are significantly more acceptable with unaccusative verbs than with unergatives, including reflexive and emission verbs. We conclude that unaccusatives, but not unergatives, are grammatical in the construction, and defend a structural account of the data.

Sentence processing in monolinguals and trilinguals

ABSTRACT Extensive research exists on language processing in both monolinguals and bilinguals. Yet, whether the trends observed in these groups also apply to trilinguals remains to be determined. A deeper understanding of sentence processing in trilinguals could shed light on the theoretical foundations of multilingualism. This study compared conflict sentence processing in monolinguals and trilinguals during a conflict resolution task. Eighteen participants from both monolingual and trilingual groups undertook semantic acceptability and syntactic judgment tasks. Both behavioral (reaction time and accuracy) and electrophysiological (latency and amplitude) responses were recorded. The behavioral analysis showed no significant differences in accuracy between the groups for either task. However, monolinguals demonstrated shorter reaction times for both tasks. Electrophysiological data suggested variations between trilinguals and monolinguals based on the task type. Trilinguals had shorter latency times for the syntactic judgment task and higher amplitude responses for the semantic acceptability task. These findings indicate distinct sentence processing methods between monolinguals and trilinguals, as evidenced by the electrophysiological results. The growing body of research on trilingualism suggests that acquiring additional languages influences cognitive and linguistic processes.

(Den) eneste måten – When the Prenominal Determiner Can Be Omitted from Norwegian Double Definite Phrases

Norwegian, like Swedish and Faroese, exhibits double definiteness: modified definite phrases normally contain both a prenominal determiner and a suffixed definite article on the noun. However, exceptions—phrases with only the determiner or only the suffixed article—can be found. This article investigates adjectives which do not need to be preceded by the prenominal determiner in Norwegian. Corpus data and acceptability judgments are used to describe these exceptions and to propose a syntactic analysis. The study shows that there are three types of adjectives in Norwegian: regular ones that require double definiteness, exceptional adjectives that allow determiner omission, and quantifier adjectives that never occur with a determiner. I argue that phrases with exceptional adjectives can be accounted for by the same movement that is proposed for determiner-less phrases in Icelandic and Northern Swedish (Julien 2002, 2005). Finally, the article presents a brief exploration of the patterns of variation in omission versus presence of the determiner, including historical and dialectal variation.

The effect of lexical triggers on Spanish-English code-switched judgment tasks.

It has been argued that certain words can "trigger" intrasentential code-switching. While some researchers suggest that cognates establish triggering at the lexical level, others have argued that words that lack direct translations are more natural stories switch. Yet to be tested experimentally is to what extent different types of lexical items influence the acceptability of mixed utterances. The current study investigates this methodological consideration for code-switching research by having early US Spanish-English bilinguals (i.e., heritage speakers of Spanish) complete an acceptability judgment task with a 7-point Likert scale directly comparing cognates (e.g., sopa "soup") and culturally specific items (e.g., pozole "traditional Mexican soup") in otherwise identical grammatical switched sentences (N = 24). The results showed that there was no significant effect of condition (p = 0.623) suggesting that cognates and language-specific items are equally acceptable in code-switched sentences. Indeed all conditions were rated on average above 6. These findings show that in this context, judgment tasks are not affected differently by these types of lexical items.

Spanish Negative Concord Items: Experimental Evidence for Their Status as Strict Negative Polarity Items

This study investigates the semantic status of Spanish Negative Concord Items (NCIs) through their comparison with English Negative Quantifiers (NQs) and Polarity Items (PIs) in acceptability judgment tasks conducted among native speakers of Spanish and English. NCIs exhibit a dual behavior depending on their syntactic context, which has resulted in various analyses that categorize them as NQs, PIs, or non-negative indefinites. The findings from this investigation provide experimental confirmation that Spanish NCIs behave like strict Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) or indefinites that are exclusively licensed by a syntactically local anti-veridical operator (i.e., negation). This experimental approach sheds light on the longstanding controversy surrounding the semantic characterization of Spanish NCIs and contributes to our understanding of their behavior across a wide array of linguistic contexts.

Agreement attraction in grammatical sentences and the role of the task

This study evaluates two broad classes of language processing accounts that make predictions for sentences like “The admirer of the singer(s) apparently thinks...”. Feature distortion accounts predict increased processing difficulty at the verb in sentences with a plural distractor noun (singers) while similarity-based interference accounts predict the opposite: increased difficulty in sentences with a singular distractor noun (singer). Neither of these effects was reliably observed in earlier research, and the Bayesian meta-analysis of 31 published studies reported here is almost perfectly inconclusive. An explanation may be that both effects occur simultaneously and therefore mask each other. To test this idea, we conducted three single-trial self-paced reading experiments (N1=4,296, N2=3,920, N3=3,559) which orthogonally manipulated agreement attraction and inhibitory interference. Surprisingly, all three experiments produced evidence for agreement attraction but none for inhibitory interference, which supports feature distortion but not similarity-based interference accounts. Experiment 4 (N4=3,535) tested the role of the expected task by preparing participants for a comprehension question (vs. acceptability judgment in Experiments 1–3). It showed neither agreement attraction nor inhibitory interference effects. Our findings demonstrate that agreement attraction effects can arise in grammatical sentences – contra earlier research – but also that these effects crucially depend on the task. This explains inconsistent results in prior research and supports feature distortion as the driving force behind attraction effects in grammatical sentences.

Language transfers in third language acquisition of Chinese by intermediate level German and English native speakers: evidence from a behavioral experiment online.

The paper investigates language transfers in third language acquisition of Chinese by native German and English speakers at intermediate level. Subjects are divided into two groups and complete a Grammaticality Judgment and Correction Task through a behavioral experiment online. The results from multiple sources show that: (1) both L1 and L2 are sources of language transfers and the perceived crosslinguistic similarity of abstract structural properties serves as the main reason; (2) language transfers can be non-facilitative on L3 learning; (3) as L3 proficiency level improves, the less likely learners are to be affected by non-facilitative language transfers in L3 learning, but it may not disappear completely; (4) the background language with higher proficiency level is more likely to impose language transfers in L3 learning. The research suggests that language transfers in TLA are simultaneously regulated by a number of factors, such as similarities of abstract structural properties between background languages and L3, as well as language proficiency levels. At the end, we discuss the application of the results to Chinese language teaching.