LINGUIST List 21.4811 Tue Nov 30 2010 Sum: Study: Acceptability Judgments in German Editor for this issue: Danielle St. Jean <daniellelinguistlist.org> To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     Petra-Kristin Bonitz , Study: Acceptability Judgments in German Message 1: Study: Acceptability Judgments in German Date: 30-Nov-2010 From: Petra-Kristin Bonitz <pbonitzphil.uni-goettingen.de> Subject: Study: Acceptability Judgments in German E-mail this message to a friend Query for this summary posted in LINGUIST Issue: 21.3416 Dear Linguists, I would like to give a big "thank you" to everyone that participated in my psycholinguistic study on acceptability judgements! I made an online survey during the time of the 21st of August until the 17th of September, for which the test persons had to judge a number of sentences in German. Contrary to the assumption of some test persons, no sentence was repeated - only their structures followed a special system. In the end 644 test persons filled in the questionnaire (with 21 non-native speaker of the German language). The aim of the study is to learn more about the effect of regional differences that influence the acceptability judgements of syntactically varying structures that differed from normal sentence schemes. Furthermore, a special method was used, called "Magnitude Estimation". This method was realized in a web-based manner. It offers us the possibility to compare the new results with conventional surveys. With Magnitude Estimation the test person creates their own rating scale without making recourse to a fixed 5- or 7-point-scale. I wanted to determine how test persons use the open scale and how wide they set the scope of the scale. For example, is there a zero point in the acceptability, that is, is it always possible to judge sentences as more ungrammatical as previous ones or is there a saturation point? Currently, we're working on a detailed evaluation and analysis of the data. First results show that there are regional differences concerning the acceptability of structures that differ more or less from standard structures (in written language). Thanks to all test persons and also thanks to The LINGUIST List, which helped me reach a lot of interested people. Best wishes, Petra-Kristin Bonitz University of Göttingen, Germany Linguistic Field(s): Psycholinguistics                             Syntax Subject Language(s): German, Standard (deu) Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 30-Nov-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.