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This volume examines the interpretation of gradient judgments of sentence acceptability in relation to theories of grammatical knowledge. It uses experimental and corpus-based research, along with a range of case studies, to argue for a new approach to this crucial problem.
List of contents
- General preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of figures
- List of abbreviations
- 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, English, and Cantonese relative clauses
- 8: Gradient acceptability, methodological diversity, and theoretical interpretation
- Glossary
- References
- Index
About the author
Elaine J. Francis is a professor in the Department of English at Purdue University, where she has been teaching linguistics and directing the Experimental Linguistics Lab since 2003. She completed her PhD in linguistics at the University of Chicago in 1999 and taught for three years in the Department of English at the University of Hong Kong. In her research, she investigates syntactic, discourse, and processing-based factors that affect the realization of syntactic alternations in English and Cantonese.
Summary
This volume examines the interpretation of gradient judgments of sentence acceptability in relation to theories of grammatical knowledge. It uses experimental and corpus-based research, along with a range of case studies, to argue for a new approach to this crucial problem.
Additional text
Elaine Francis' book is compelling reading as it addresses a complex topic with fundamental relevance to all grammatical descriptions and theories. Francis makes a convincing case for gradience in grammar and for a multi-methodological approach to assessing language data. It is a comprehensive and principled synthesis of the literature enriched by the author's own research.
