Linguistic Intuitions. Evidence and Method

Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
The contributors
1 Introduction (Brøcker et al.)
PART I. ACCOUNTS OF LINGUISTIC INTUITIONS
2 Linguistic intuitions (Gross)
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Devitt on the "Voice of Competence" and his modest alternative
2.3 Clarifying the options and locating the current proposal
2.4 Candidate monitoring mechanisms
2.5 Error signals and linguistic intuitions
2.6 Error signals as the Voice of Competence
2.7 Other linguistic intuitions, other sources
2.8 Why not intuitions elsewhere
Acknowledgments
3 A defense of the Voice of Competence (Rey)
3.1 A "Voice of Competence"
3.1.1 Devitt's skepticism about (non-)standard models
3.1.2 I-languages vs. E-languages
3.1.3 Devitt's alternative proposal
3.2 Grammar, parsing, and perception
3.2.1 Linguistic perception, phonology, and parsing
3.2.2 Non-ceptual content: NCSDs
3.2.3 Having vs. representing linguistic properties
3.2.4 How NCSDs would help
3.3 The evidence
3.3.1 Involuntary phonology
3.3.2 "Meaningless" syntax
3.3.3 Syntax trumping "the message": Garden paths, structural priming, and "slips of the ear"
3.4 Conclusion
Note
4 Linguistic intuitions again (Devitt)
Part I: VoC and ME
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Voice of Competence
4.3 Modest explanation
4.4 The rejection of VoC
Parti II: Gross, Rey, and the defense of VoC
4.5 Background
4.6 Intuitive linguistic usage versus intuitive metalinguistic judgment (= linguistic intuition)
4.7 Rey's bait and switch
4.8 Rey's arguments for VoC
4.9 Gross' argument for VoC
4.10 Conclusion
5 Do generative linguists believe in a Voice of Competence (Brøcker)
5.1 What is the received view?
5.2 Dissecting VoC
5.2.1 Competence or experience with reflecting on sentences?
5.2.2 Acceptability or grammaticality?
5.2.3 Role of mental grammar: Supplying dta or content?
5.2.4 Falibility/direct access?
5.2.5 Mentalist view of grammar?
5.2.6 Implemented structure rules?
5.3 The study
5.3.1 Materials and aprticipants
5.3.2 Results
5.4 The received view assessed
5.5 Appendix
Acknowledgments
6 Semantic and syntactic intuitions (Collins)
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Semantics and syntax: Linguistic phenomena
6.3 The distinction between syntactic and semantic intuitions
6.4 Semantic intutions
6.5 Why the attitude view is wrong
6.6 The right view of semantic intuitions
6.7 Syntactic intuitions
6.8 Grammaticality without interpretation
6.9 Interpretations without grammaticality
6.10 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
7 Intuitions about meaning, experience, and reliability (Drożdżowicz)
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Intuitive judgments about meaning and their use
7.3 Intuitions and the phenomenology of language understanding: The experience-based strategy
7.4 Intuitive judgments and the monitoring of speech comprehension: The reliabiilist strategy
7.5 Comparing the two strategies
7.5.1 Descriptive adequacy
7.5.2 Addressing recent criticisms
7.5.3 Epistemological assumptions
7.6 Objections and replies
7.7 Concluding remarks
Acknowledgments
8 How can we make good use of linguistic intuitions, even if they are not good evidence (Santana)
8.1 The evidential role of linguistic intuitions
8.2 Fruitfulness
8.3 Apt etiology and the ontology of language: The social account
8.4 The etiological defense: Mentalistic
8.5 Reliability
8.6 The non-evidential role of linguistic intuitions
8.7 Conclusion
PART II. EXPERIMENTS IN SYNTAX
9 The relevance of introspective data (Newmeyer)
9.1 Introduction
9.2 A critique of "Transitivity, clause structure, and argument structure: Evidence from conversation"
9.3 The grammatical complexity of everyday speech
9.4 Some general issues regarding conversational corpora
9.4.1 Some positive features of conversational corpora
9.4.2 Some negative featurs of conversational corpora
9.5 Concluding remarks
Acknowledgments
10 Can we build a grammar on the basis of judgments? (Featherston)
10.1 Introduction
10.2 The quality of armchair judgments
10.2.1 Armchair judgments are less sensitive
10.2.2 Armchair judgments are noisy
10.3 Reassessing SA12 and SSA13
10.3.1 What counts as success?
10.3.2 Do binary oppositions make a grammar?
10.3.3 Do armchair judgments make too many distinctions?
10.4 Towards a better grammar
10.4.1 Crime and punishment
10.4.2 Gathering quantified judgments
10.5 Summing up
10,6 Appendix
11 Acceptability ratings cannot be taken at face value
11.1 Introduction
11.1.1 Motivation
11.1.2 The approach
11.1.3 Roadmap
11.2 Background
11.2.1 What we did
11.2.2 What we found and what we can and cannot conclude
11.2.3 Why we should not be surprised
11.3 Experimental methods
11.3.1 Properties common to all three experiments
11.3.2 Properties unique to individual experiments
11.4 Results
11.4.1 General observations
11.4.2 Case studies
11.5 Conclusions and future directions
Acknowledgments
12 A user's view of the validity of acceptability judgments as evidence for syntactic theories (Sprouse)
12.1 Introduction
12.2 A theory of acceptability judgments
12.2.1 What is the goal of syntactic theory?
12.2.2 What is the cognitive source of acceptability judgments
12.2.3 What is the logic that is used to convert acceptability judgments into evidence
12.2.4 What are the criteria for evaluating the success (or failure) of acceptability judgments?
12.3 The emprical properties of acceptability judgments
12.3.1 The reliability of acceptability judgments
12.3.2 Theoretical bias in acceptability judgments
12.3.3 The sensitivity of acceptability judgments
12.4 The choice to continue to use acceptability judgments
12.4.1 The scientific question
12.4.2 The practical question
12.5 Conclusion
13 Linguistic intuitions and the puzzle of gradience (Häussler & Juzek)
13.1 Introduction
13.1.1 The process of community agreement and acceptability judgment tasks
13.1.2 Acceptability and grammaticality
13.2 Linguistic intuitions
13.2.1 Acceptability intuitions
13.2.2 Source intuitions
13.2.3 Grammatical reasoning
13.2.4 A proposal concerning diacritics
13.3 Our experiments
13.3.1 Experiment 1: A differnent quality of gradience
13.3.2 Preliminary discussion
13.3.3 Experiment 2: Scale effects
13.4 The puzzle of gradience
13.4.1 Extra-grammatical factors
13.5 Concluding remarks
Acknowledgments
14 Experiments in syntax and philosophy (Schindler & Brøcker)
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Experimental syntax
14.3 Is XSyn methodoligcally superior?
14.3.1 Better reliability of the data gathered through XSyn?
13.4.2 Better validity through XSyn?
14.3.3 Richer data through XSyn?
14.3.4 Is XSyn more scientific?
14.4 Experimental philosophy: Common motivations
14.5 Lessons for XPhi from XSyn
14.5.1 Better reliability of data gathered by XPhi?
14.5.2 Better validity of XPhi?
14.5.3 Richer data through XPhi?
14.5.4 Is XPhi more scientific?
14.6 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
Index