3 febrer, 2018
Autors:
Urtzi Etxeberria, Susagna Tubau, Viviane Deprez, Joan Borràs-Comes and M. Teresa Espinal
Títol:
Relating (Un)acceptability to InterpretationEditorial: Frontiers in Psychology
Col·lecció: Frontiers in Psychology #8Data de publicació: 2018
Més informació
Text completAlthough contemporary linguistic studies routinely use unacceptable sentences to determine the boundary of what falls outside the scope of grammar, investigations far more rarely take into consideration the possible interpretations of such sentences, perhaps because these interpretations are commonly prejudged as irrelevant or unreliable across speakers. In this paper we provide the results of two experiments in which participants had to make parallel acceptability and interpretation judgments of sentences presenting various types of negative dependencies in Basque and in two varieties of Spanish (Castilian Spanish and Basque Country Spanish). Our results show that acceptable sentences are uniformly assigned a single negation reading in the two languages. However, while unacceptable sentences consistently convey single negation in Basque, they are interpreted at chance in both varieties of Spanish. These results confirm that judgment data that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable negative utterances can inform us not only about an adult’s grammar of his/her particular language but also about interesting cross-linguistic differences. We conclude that the acceptability and interpretation of (un)grammatical negative sentences can serve linguistic theory construction by helping to disentangle basic assumptions about the nature of various negative dependencies.
Títols de la col·lecció / Also in this series:
8 juny, 2022
Autors:
Tsiakmakis, E. & M.T. Espinal
Títol:
Expletiveness in grammar and beyondEditorial: Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 7(1)
Data de publicació: Maig del 2022
Text completThis paper sets out to find the defining characteristics of so-called expletive categories and the consequences the existence of such categories has for Universal Grammar. Looking into different instantiations of expletive subjects and impersonal pronouns, definite articles, negative markers and plural markers in various natural languages, we reach the following generalizations: (i) expletive categories are deficient functional elements interpreted as introducing an identity function at the level of semantic representation, (ii) they can be divided into syntactic expletives, that occur to satisfy some syntactic relationship with another item in the clause, and semantic expletives, that stand in a semantic dependency with some c-commanding category, and (iii) expletive categories tend to develop additional meaning components that are computed beyond core grammar, at the level where speech act-related information is encoded. Our discussion reveals that all categories that have been traditionally considered as expletive in the linguistic literature are interpretable in grammar or beyond and, thus, do not violate Chomsky’s Full Interpretation Principle. We conclude that there are no expletive elements in natural languages and that expletiveness is not a grammatically relevant concept.
14 juliol, 2021
Autors:
Evripidis Tsiakmakis, Joan Borràs-Comes, M.Teresa Espinal
Títol:
The interpretation of plural mass nouns in Greek, Journal of Pragmatics 181Editorial: Elsevier
Data de publicació: Agost 2021
Més informacióThis paper focuses on the interpretation of what has been considered an expletive marker in the grammar of the Greek nominal domain: the plural number of mass nouns. We present the results of an experimental investigation on the interpretation of plural mass nouns by native speakers of this language, and we propose a speech act analysis according to which at the time of producing utterances that contain plural mass nouns the speaker performs two speech acts: an assertion and an expressive speech act by which (s)he publicly commits to an emotive stance of dislike towards the expressed proposition φ. This stance is analyzed as an emotive judgment with respect to φ, the expression of which directly transfers the speaker's emotion from the conversation into the speaker and addressee's common ground.
13 abril, 2021
Autors:
Urtzi Etxeberria, Susagna Tubau, Joan Borràs-Comes & M.Teresa Espinal
Títol:
Polarity Items in BasqueEditorial: Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Springer
Data de publicació: 13 d'abril del 2021
This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation that looks into the acceptability and interpretation judgements that Basque native speakers give to sentences with multiple i-/bat ere indefinites in declarative sentences. It is argued that Basque i-/bat ere indefinites are Polarity Items (PIs) rather than Negative Concord Items (NCIs), as they are consistently associated with an existential reading in unacceptable declarative sentences without an overt negative licensor. That is, Basque i-/bat ere indefinites never give rise to a negative interpretation in the absence of an overt negative marker. It is also argued that Basque PIs differ from NCIs in Strict Negative Concord languages such as Greek in relevant ways, thus reinforcing the conclusion that Basque is not a NC language. This study contributes to a better understanding of the conditions that an indefinite expression must meet to be classified as a PI or as an NCI.
27 octubre, 2020
Autors:
S. Tubau, U. Etxeberria, V. Déprez i M.T. Espinal (coeditors)
Títol:
Research topic: What are (un)acceptabiity and (un)grammaticality? How do they relate to one another and to interpretation? Frontiers in PsychologyEditorial: Frontiers
Data de publicació: 2020
Més informacióAlthough grammatical sentences and their interpretations are generally considered the building blocks of linguistic theories, the relation between the theoretically deemed-to-be grammatical sentences and the notion of acceptability that speakers establish regarding them is far from being straightforward.
Some grammatical sentences that present parsing complications (e.g. garden-path sentences) might appear unacceptable to speakers, as they are difficult to understand. Other sentences, considered as ungrammatical by theoreticians (e.g. wh-island violations, sentences with resumptive pronouns, semantically implausible sequences, and sentences with unlicensed negative polarity items) might be perceived as acceptable by speakers and lead to reliable interpretations.
To further complicate matters, recent research on how grammatical 'illusions' (e.g. negative polarity item licensing, and comparative illusions) are perceived, understood and processed has revealed that speakers can subconsciously correct ungrammatical or ill-formed sentences by making use of specific repair strategies. Studies have also revealed that adults can learn to understand novel constructions considered to be syntactically ungrammatical (e.g. the ‘needs’ construction).
Taking into account these experimental results, there is now a fundamental need for novel operational, empirically and theoretically grounded redefinitions for core notions such as:
(un)acceptability; (un)grammaticality and, finally, the continual exploration of the existing complex interactions between sentences’ (un)acceptability and (un)grammaticality and their final interpretation.
In this vein, it seems necessary to evaluate how suitable specialized research methods can be, to establish the degree and extent to which particular linguistic structures and their interpretations are acceptable or unacceptable to speakers and how this can reliably relate to theoretical (un)grammaticality. If necessary, more analytic methodologies (e.g. acceptability scales, elicitation techniques, time forced-choice tasks, etc.) must be developed in order to provide dependable results informing on linguistic theory. This should lead to (i) a better understanding of what makes (un)grammatical sentences (un)acceptable or the other way around, (ii) a better account of speaker’s preferences and optionality in connection to (un)acceptability and (un)grammaticality, and (iii) the role of performance factors, memory limitations, and processing mechanisms in the evaluation of (un)acceptability, (un)grammaticality, and interpretation of linguistic structures.
We welcome manuscripts addressing any of the following topics and subtopics from theoretical and/or experimental perspectives, covering a wide range of languages and linguistic structures:
-What is (un)acceptability in linguistics?
-How does (un)acceptability relate to (un)grammaticality?
-Methodological issues related to (un)acceptability and/or (un)grammaticality.
-How are speaker's preferences and optionality connected to (un)acceptability and (un)grammaticality?
-What factors are relevant for the evaluation of (un)acceptability, (un)grammaticality, and interpretation of linguistic structures?
