Grammaticality

The empirical base of linguistics: Grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology

“…Gleitman, Gleitman & Shipley (1972) showed that 2½-year-olds can detect and correct certain grammatical errors in simple imperatives (but see Gombert (1992) for a critique), although it was rare for them to correct just syntax, and that 6-to-8-year-olds could correctly explain a wide variety of grammatical errors. 33 Such factors are not entirely abandoned in adulthood; see several studies reported in Chapter 4, notably Hill (1961) and Vetter, Volovecky & Howell (1979). 34 However, the procedure that Hakes used could have been subject to a response bias, since he asked the children to explain their reasons for rejection but not for acceptance (see Section 6.3.2).…”

Principal Component Analysis of Ratings of Some Deviant English Sentences

“…A final ranking of groups based on the proportion of~s giving a "yes tt response matched the predicted rankings based on linguistic considerations of the way the strings were constructed. In contrast to Hill (1961), the jUdgments of grammaticalness were relatively independent of meaningfulness and ordinariness. While no data were presented relevant to between-~agreement, there was some indication that the Sst judgments were not· in complete agreement.…”

“…In a polemical discussion, Hill (1961) sought to rebut Chomsky's criterion that groups of English words can be consistently and agreeably identified as grammatical or ungrammatical and conducted an informal study using only 10 sentences and 10 Ss. Some of the sentences were formally grammatical, some were grammatical but meaningless, and some were ungrammatical.…”

Computational linguistics and the study of linguistic performance

“…(Klee wouldn't lie.) I think it was Arch Hill who first remarked that such deviant sentences sometimes are very well received by humans; in some of his experiments, students thought sentences like the above to be not only "modern poetry", but "good modern poetry" (Hill 1961). There is also a persistent rumor around that Dell Hymes, having read Syntactic Structures, promptly sat down and conceived a poem whose first line reads: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously .... ,3 Not to mention, of course, that all-time status symbol, the bumper-sticker carrying the same text and serving to fatten the pockets of some enterprising graduate student, while providing the more well heeled members of the trade with a convenient shibboleth.…”