Hostname: page-component-5f7774ffb-6nplr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-02-20T18:02:51.766Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Magnitude Estimation of Linguistic Acceptability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Ellen Gurman Bard ,
Dan Robertson  and
Antonella Sorace
Ellen Gurman Bard*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Dan Robertson
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Antonella Sorace
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
Human Communication Research Center, University of Edinburgh, 2 Buccleugh Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, United Kingdom
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Judgments of linguistic acceptability constitute an important source of evidence for theoretical and applied linguistics, but are typically elicited and represented in ways which limit their utility. This paper describes how MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION, a technique used in psychophysics, can be adapted for eliciting acceptability judgments. Magnitude estimation of linguistic acceptability is shown to solve the measurement scale problems which plague conventional techniques; to provide data which make fine distinctions robustly enough to yield statistically significant results of linguistic interest; to be usable in a consistent way by linguistically naive speaker-hearers, and to allow replication across groups of subjects. Methodological pitfalls are discussed and suggestions are offered for new approaches to the analysis and measurement of linguistic acceptability.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 32 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bard, Ellen Gurman, Robertson, Dan; and Sorace, Antonella. 1994. Magnitude estimation of linguistic acceptability. Research Paper HCRC/RP-52. Edinburgh: Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Botha, Rudolph P. 1973. The justification of linguistic hypotheses: A study of non-demonstrative inference in transformational grammar. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian syntax: A government-binding approach. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, John M., Bever, Thomas G.; and Pollack, Chava R.. 1981. The nonuniqueness of linguistic intuitions. Language 57. 368–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1991. Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. Principles and parameters in comparative grammar, ed. by Freidin, Robert, 417–54. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cross, David. 1974. Some technical notes on psychophysical scaling. Sensation and measurement: Papers in honor of S. S. Stevens, ed. by Moskowitz, Howard R., Scharf, Bertram, and Stevens, Joseph C., 23–36. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Cross, David. 1982. On judgments of magnitude. Social attitudes and psychological measurement, ed. by Wegener, Bernd, 73–88. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Dawson, William E. 1974. An assessment of ratio scales of opinion produced by sensory-modality matching. Sensation and measurement: Papers in honor of S. S. Stevens, ed. by Moskowitz, Howard R., Scharf, Bertram, and Stevens, Joseph C., 49–59. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Dawson, William E., and Brinker, Richard P.. 1971. Validation of ratio scales of opinion by multimodality matching. Perception and Psychophysics 9. 413–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, Gösta. 1962. Measurement of moral judgment: A comparison of scaling methods. Perceptual and Motor Skills 15. 3–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fucci, Donald, Ellis, Lee; and Petrosino, Linda. 1990. Speech clarity/intelligibility: Test-retest reliability of magnitude estimation scaling. Perceptual and Motor Skills 70. 232–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gaito, John. 1980. Measurement scales and statistics: Resurgence of an old misconception. Psychological Bulletin 87. 564–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Kerry P. 1987. The perception of speaking rate using visual information from a talker's face. Perception and Psychophysics 42. 587–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grosjean, François. 1977. The perception of rate in spoken and sign languages. Perception and Psychophysics 22. 408–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosjean, François, and Lass, Norman J.. 1977. Some factors affecting the listener's perception of reading rate in English and French. Language and Speech 20. 198–208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haegeman, Liliane. 1991. Introduction to government and binding theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hamblin, Robert L. 1974. Social attitudes: Magnitude measurement and theory. Measurement in the Social Sciences, ed. by Blalock, Hubert M., 61–120. Chicago: Aldine.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuennapas, Teodor, and Wikstroem, Inger. 1963. Measurement of occupational preferences: A comparison of scaling methods. Perceptual and Motor Skills 17. 611–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Labov, William. 1970. Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language in Society 1. 97–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levelt, Willem. 1972. Some psychological aspects of linguistic data. Linguistische Berichte 17. 18–30.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth, and Hovav, Malka Rappaport. 1994. A preliminary analysis of causative verbs in English. Lingua 92. 35–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, Beth, and Hovav, Malka Rappaport. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantic interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lodge, Milton. 1981. Magnitude scaling: Quantitative measurement of opinions. Beverly Hills/London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lodge, Milton, Cross, David, Tursky, Bernard, Foley, Mary-Ann; and Foley, H.. 1976. The calibration and cross-modal validation of ratio scales of political opinion in survey research. Social Science Research 5. 325–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, John, and Prince, Alan. 1993. Prosodic morphology: Constraint interaction and satisfaction. Amherst: University of Massachusetts and New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, ms.Google Scholar
Michell, Joel. 1986. Measurement scales and statistics: A clash of paradigms. Psychological Bulletin 100. 398–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michell, Joel. 1990. An introduction to the logic of psychological measurement. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Nagata, Hiroshi. 1987a. Change in the modulus of judgmental scale: An inadequate explanation for the repetition effect in judgments of grammaticality. Perceptual and Motor Skills 65. 907–910.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagata, Hiroshi. 1987b. Long-term effect of repetition on judgments of grammaticality. Perceptual and Motor Skills 65. 295–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagata, Hiroshi. 1988. The relativity of linguistic intuition: The effect of repetition on grammaticality judgments. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 17. 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagata, Hiroshi. 1989. Effect of repetition on grammaticality judgments under objective and subjective self-awareness conditions. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 18. 255–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick W. 1983. Grammatical theory: Its limits and its possibilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pavlovic, Chaslav V., Rossi, Mario; and Espesser, Robert. 1990. Use of the magnitude estimation technique for assessing the performance of text-to-speech synthesis systems. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 87. 373–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perlmutter, David. 1978. Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. Berkeley Linguistics Society 4. 157–89.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David. 1989. Multiattachment and the unaccusative hypothesis: The perfect auxiliary in Italian. Probus 1. 63–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulton, Eustace C. 1986. The new psychophysics: Six models for magnitude estimation. Psychological Bulletin 69. 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulton, Eustace C.. 1989. Bias in quantifying judgments. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, and Greenbaum, Sidney. 1970. Elicitation experiments in English: Linguistic studies in use and attitude. Harlow: Longmans.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized minimality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Robertson, Dan, Sorace, Antonella; and Bard, Ellen Gurman. 1993. Magnitude estimation of linguistic acceptability as a tool for studying second language acquisition. Paper presented at the International Conference on the Psychology of Language and Communication, University of Glasgow.Google Scholar
Sorace, Antonella. 1988. Linguistic intuitions in interlanguage development: The problem of indeterminacy. Learnability in second languages, ed. by Pankhurst, James N., Smith, Michael Sharwood, and Buren, Paul van, 167–90. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, Antonella. 1990. Indeterminacy in first and second languages: Theoretical and methodological issues. Individualising the assessment of language abilities, ed. by de Jong, John H. A. L., and Stevenson, Douglas K., 127–53. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Sorace, Antonella. 1992. Lexical conditions on syntactic knowledge: Auxiliary selection in native and non-native grammars of Italian. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh dissertation.Google Scholar
Sorace, Antonella. 1993a. Incomplete vs. divergent representations of unaccusativity in non-native grammars of Italian. Second Language Research 9. 22–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, Antonella. 1993b. Unaccusativity and auxiliary choice in non-native grammars of Italian and French: Asymmetries and predictable indeterminacy. Journal of French Language Studies 3. 71–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, Antonella. 1995. Optimality, gradients of grammaticality, and interlanguage grammars. Paper presented at the Language Acquisition Research Symposium, Utrecht.Google Scholar
Sorace, Antonella. 1996. Acquiring argument structures and linking rules in a second language: The unaccusative-unergative distinction. The current state of interlanguage, ed. by Eubank, Lynn, Smith, Michael Sharwood, and Selinker, Larry. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Stevens, Joseph C, Mack, Joel D.; and Stevens, S. Smith. 1960. Growth of sensation on seven continua as measured by force of handgrip. Journal of Experimental Psychology 59. 60–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevens, S. Smith. 1946. On the theory of scales of measurement. Science 103. 667–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevens, S. Smith. 1951. Mathematics, measurement, and psychophysics. Handbook of experimental psychology, ed. by Stevens, S. S., 1–49. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Stevens, S. Smith. 1956. The direct estimation of sensory magnitudes—loudness. American Journal of Psychology 69. 1–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevens, S. Smith. 1957. On the psychophysical law. Psychological Review 64. 153–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevens, S. Smith. 1966. A metric for the social consensus. Science 151. 530–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevens, S. Smith. 1969. On predicting exponents for cross-modality matches. Perception and Psychophysics 6. 251–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, S. Smith. 1975. Psychophysics: Introduction to its perceptual, neural, and social prospects. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Takefuta, Yukio, Guberina, Peter, Pizzamiglio, Luigi; and Black, John W.. 1986. Cross-lingual measurements of interconsonantal differences. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 15. 489–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toner, Mary Ann, and Emanuel, Floyd W.. 1989. Direct magnitude estimation and equal appearing interval scaling of vowel roughness. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 32. 78–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Townsend, James T., and Ashby, F. Gregory. 1984. Measurement scales and statistics: The misconception misconceived. Psychological Bulletin 96. 394–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trueswell, John C, and Tanenhaus, Michael K.. 1991. Tense, temporal context and syntactic ambiguity resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes 6. 303–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zautra, Alex J., Guarnaccia, Charles A.; and Dohrenwend, Bruce P.. 1986. Measuring small life events. American Journal of Community Psychology 14. 629–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

A correction has been issued for this article:

Corrections