{"title":"语法/语义研究中的定量方法:对Sprouse和Almeida(2013)的回应","authors":"E. Gibson, S. Piantadosi, Evelina Fedorenko","doi":"10.1080/01690965.2012.704385","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Sprouse and Almeida (S&A) present quantitative results that suggest that intuitive judgments utilised in syntax research are generally correct in two-condition comparisons: the sentence type that is presented as “good/grammatical” is usually rated better than the sentence type that is presented as “bad/ungrammatical” in controlled experiments. Although these evaluations of intuitive relative judgments are valuable, they do not justify the use of nonquantitative linguistic methods. We argue that objectivity is a universal value in science that should be adopted by linguistics. In addition, the reliability measures that S&A report are not sufficient for developing sophisticated linguistic theories. Furthermore, quantitative methods yield two additional benefits: consistency of judgments across many pairs of judgments; and an understanding of the relative effect sizes across sets of judgments. We illustrate these points with an experiment that demonstrates five clear levels of acceptability. Finally, we observe that S&A's experiments—where only two authors evaluated 10 years' worth of journal articles and one standard textbook within a few months—further emphasise one of our critical original points: conducting behavioural experiments is in many respects easy and fast with the advent of online research tools like Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Given the current ease of performing quantitative experiments (using a platform like Mechanical Turk) and the clear limitations of not doing so, linguistic hypotheses should be evaluated quantitatively whenever it is feasible.","PeriodicalId":87410,"journal":{"name":"Language and cognitive processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2013-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01690965.2012.704385","citationCount":"39","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Quantitative methods in syntax/semantics research: A response to Sprouse and Almeida (2013)\",\"authors\":\"E. Gibson, S. 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Furthermore, quantitative methods yield two additional benefits: consistency of judgments across many pairs of judgments; and an understanding of the relative effect sizes across sets of judgments. We illustrate these points with an experiment that demonstrates five clear levels of acceptability. Finally, we observe that S&A's experiments—where only two authors evaluated 10 years' worth of journal articles and one standard textbook within a few months—further emphasise one of our critical original points: conducting behavioural experiments is in many respects easy and fast with the advent of online research tools like Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Given the current ease of performing quantitative experiments (using a platform like Mechanical Turk) and the clear limitations of not doing so, linguistic hypotheses should be evaluated quantitatively whenever it is feasible.\",\"PeriodicalId\":87410,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Language and cognitive processes\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.0000,\"publicationDate\":\"2013-03-26\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01690965.2012.704385\",\"citationCount\":\"39\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Language and cognitive processes\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2012.704385\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"\",\"JCRName\":\"\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language and cognitive processes","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2012.704385","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
Quantitative methods in syntax/semantics research: A response to Sprouse and Almeida (2013)
Sprouse and Almeida (S&A) present quantitative results that suggest that intuitive judgments utilised in syntax research are generally correct in two-condition comparisons: the sentence type that is presented as “good/grammatical” is usually rated better than the sentence type that is presented as “bad/ungrammatical” in controlled experiments. Although these evaluations of intuitive relative judgments are valuable, they do not justify the use of nonquantitative linguistic methods. We argue that objectivity is a universal value in science that should be adopted by linguistics. In addition, the reliability measures that S&A report are not sufficient for developing sophisticated linguistic theories. Furthermore, quantitative methods yield two additional benefits: consistency of judgments across many pairs of judgments; and an understanding of the relative effect sizes across sets of judgments. We illustrate these points with an experiment that demonstrates five clear levels of acceptability. Finally, we observe that S&A's experiments—where only two authors evaluated 10 years' worth of journal articles and one standard textbook within a few months—further emphasise one of our critical original points: conducting behavioural experiments is in many respects easy and fast with the advent of online research tools like Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Given the current ease of performing quantitative experiments (using a platform like Mechanical Turk) and the clear limitations of not doing so, linguistic hypotheses should be evaluated quantitatively whenever it is feasible.