Editorial: What Are (Un)Acceptability and (Un)Grammaticality? How Do They Relate to One Another and to Interpretation?

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Susagna Tubau¹  Urtzi Etxeberria²  Viviane Déprez³  M.Teresa Espinal¹ 

[1] Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona;Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique;Department of Linguistics, Rutgers University, United States

关键词: (un)acceptability;    (un)grammaticality;    interpretation;    linguistics;    experimental investigation;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.621267

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

That grammatical sentences and their interpretation form the building blocks of linguistic theoriesis not controversial. Yet, the collection of articles in the present Research Topic shows that thenotion of (un)grammaticality, on the one hand, and the observations of (un)acceptability ratings,on the other, can entertain in fact rather complex interactions. That is, the relation betweenthe notion of grammaticality and the actual acceptability that speakers attribute to sentencesis far from being straightforward: not only can some grammatical sentences present parsingdifficulties that cause speakers to judge them unacceptable, but also sentences that are consideredungrammatical by linguists could be perceived as acceptable by speakers and lead to reliableinterpretations. In addition, the methodology used in the investigation of (un)acceptability and(un)grammaticality and their relation may play an important role in our ultimate understandingof these two core notions which, despite being in principle independent from one another, oftencrisscross. Therefore, it seems useful and perhaps necessary to engage in actively evaluating howcertain research methods can prove particularly useful when trying to establish the degree andextent to which (un)grammatical linguistic structures and their interpretations are (un)acceptableto speakers, and how this can be taken to reliably and consistently relate to (un)grammaticality.

【 授权许可】

CC BY