Experimental syntax is an area that is rapidly growing as linguistic research becomes increasingly focused on replicable language data, in both fieldwork and laboratory environments. The first of its kind, this handbook provides an in-depth overview of current issues and trends in this field, with contributions from leading international scholars. It pays special attention to sentence acceptability experiments, outlining current best practices in conducting tests, and pointing out promising new avenues for future research. Separate sections review research results from the past 20 years, covering specific syntactic phenomena and language types. The handbook also outlines other common psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods for studying syntax, comparing and contrasting them with acceptability experiments, and giving useful perspectives on the interplay between theoretical and experimental linguistics. Providing an up-to-date reference on this exciting field, it is essential reading for students and researchers in linguistics interested in using experimental methods to conduct syntactic research.
Introduction Grant Goodall; Part I. General Issues in Acceptability Experiments: 1. Sentence Acceptability Experiments: What, How, and Why Grant Goodall; 2. Response Methods in Acceptability Experiments Sam Featherston; 3. Approaching Gradience in Acceptability with the Tools of Signal Detection Theory Brian Dillon and Matthew Wagers; 4. Variation in Participants and Stimuli in Acceptability Experiments Jana Häussler and Tom Juzek; 5. Acceptability, Grammar, and Processing Gisbert Fanselow; 6. Satiation William Snyder; 7. Acceptability (and Other) Experiments for Studying Comparative Syntax Dustin Chacón; Part II. Experimental Studies of Specific Phenomena: 8. Resumptive Pronouns in English Chung-hye Han; 9. Island Effects Jon Sprouse and Sandra Villata; 10. The That-Trace Effect Wayne Cowart and Dana McDaniel; 11. Anaphora: Experimental Methods for Investigating Coreference Elsi Kaiser; 12. Constituent Order and Acceptability Thomas Weskott; 13. Acceptability Judgments at the Syntax-¬Semantics Interface Jesse Harris; Part III. Experimental Studies of Specific Populations and Language Families: 14. Acceptability Studies in L2 Populations Tania Ionin; 15. Judgments of Acceptability, Truth and Felicity in Child Language Rosalind Thornton; 16. Acceptability and Truth Value Judgment Studies in East Asian Languages Shin Fukuda; 17. Acceptability Experiments in Romance Languages Timothy Gupton and Tania Leal; 18. Acceptability Studies in (Non-English) Germanic Languages Markus Bader; 19. Acceptability Studies in Semitic Languages Aya Meltzer-Asscher; 20. Experimental Syntax and the Slavic Languages Arthur Stepanov; 21. Acceptability Judgments in Sign Linguistics Vadim Kimmelman; Part IV. Experimental Syntax Beyond Acceptability: 22. Theories All The Way Down: Remarks on 'Theoretical' and 'Experimental' Linguistics Colin Phillips, Nick Huang, Phoebe Gaston and Hanna Muller; 23. Eye-Tracking and Self-Paced Reading Claudia Felser; 24. Nothing Entirely New Under the Sun: ERP Responses to Manipulations of Syntax Robert Kluender; 25. Corpus Studies of Syntax Jerid Francom; 26. Syntax and Speaking Shota Momma; 27. Neuroimaging William Matchin.
Grant Goodall is Professor of Linguistics at University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the influential 1987 book Parallel Structures in Syntax and of many important articles on syntactic phenomena in English, Spanish, and other languages. In recent years, he has been at the forefront of using experimental techniques to address longstanding questions in syntactic theory.
