GUEST TALK: Experimental investigation of acceptability judgments

GUEST TALK: Towards a harder science of language: Experimental investigation of acceptability judgments by Berke Şenşekerci (supervisor: Dr Marcin Opacki) is taking place on Wednesday, 5^th June, 13.15, Dobra 55, Room 1430 (next to the yellow stairs).

Linguistic theories typically assume that grammaticality is a binary concept. However, acceptability judgment tasks (AJTs), commonly used to gather data about speakers’ mental grammar, consistently reveal a gradient pattern of grammaticality. This gradient pattern remains controversial, with proponents of binary grammaticality attributing it to performance-related confounds (e.g., processing difficulty). To address these issues, it is essential to better understand the impact of performance factors in AJTs and the intricate relationship between grammar and performance. In this talk, I will propose a series of experiments designed to investigate these aspects and discuss the implications of gradient grammaticality for linguistic theory.