LINGUIST List 17.3133

Wed Oct 25 2006

Qs: New and Innovative Methods in Syntactic Inquiry

Editor for this issue: Kevin Burrows <kevinlinguistlist.org>

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Directory         1.    Stanley Dubinsky, New and Innovative Methods in Syntactic Inquiry

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Message 1: New and Innovative Methods in Syntactic Inquiry
Date: 25-Oct-2006
From: Stanley Dubinsky <dubinskysc.edu>
Subject: New and Innovative Methods in Syntactic Inquiry


Greetings,

I have been commissioned to write for Blackwell’s “Linguistics and LanguageCompass”, an article that surveys the current state of the art regardingnew and innovative methodologies being used for the gathering of syntacticdata. Newer methods of data collection and assessment include (but are notlimited to) experimental collection of acceptability judgments, onlinesentence-processing studies, fMRI and other imaging studies, surveys ofcorpora, the consideration of language variation and change, etc.

The impetus for this survey is the fact that the traditional method ofusing acceptability judgments to support analyses is simply not as usefultoday as it was in the past. Reasons for this are several, but among themis the fact that newer data paradigms are often less obvious dataparadigms. And as the scope of inquiry pries further into the remotecorners of the languages we work on, so the certainty with which thelinguist can intuitively judge these facts fades into the background noiseof non-syntactic performative factors.

The article is intended to benefit the field in that it will seek to makewidely known, some of the methods being used and some of the publishedliterature that utilizes them. It is thereby hoped that the article willserve as encouragement to syntacticians to move beyond the traditionalmethods of analysis, and also provide a resource for them to do so.

I would therefore appreciate hearing from you if you have information thatwould be relevant to such a survey. Some of the desiderata are:

• References to key articles of your own, those of colleagues, and thosethat you deem to be particularly important in this regard.• Comments on the utility (or non-utility) of methods that you have used.• Comparisons of the efficacy of different methodologies.• Speculations on the kind of progress that syntacticians are likely tomake by incorporating specific methods into a research program.

I will cite relevant literature to the extent that length limitationspermit, and attribute comments used in the article to those that providethem, and post responses back to the Linguist List as appropriate.

I look forward to hearing from you,Stanley Dubinsky

Linguistics ProgramU of South Carolinadubinskysc.edu

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax