In this paper we report the results of three studies which investigate the role of stimulus and organismic factors in sentence judgments. This research grows out of our concern with the empirical basis of linguistics, with the kinds of data which are (or should be) used to test linguistic hypotheses in attempts to falsify theories (grammars). Subjects in the three studies were 106 persons with various degrees of linguistic sophistication, each of whom completed one of three tasks involving judgments of sentences. Among other things we found four factors underlying sentence judgments, one of which was a Grammaticality-Acceptability factor. We isolated a type of person which we labelled 'Naive Grammarian'. 'Naive Grammarians' discriminate between Theoretical or Foreign Errors on the one hand and Grammatical sentences or strings exhibiting particular Native Errors on the other. Linguistic training apparently influences judgments of sentences. These and other results are discussed in terms of 'mere exposure' and processing difficulty, and implications for linguistic theory are sketched. If 'Naive Grammarians' are quite homogeneous in their judgments of sentence grammaticality, and if their judgments differ from those of linguists, whose judgments do we use to test linguistic hypotheses? We suggest that the judgments of linguists are not necessarily preferable. In fact, linguists' judgments may be artifactual to some extent, warped by their strong theories.
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