Other questions and comments

In this subsection, I present the generative participants’ answers to a couple of additional questions that do not fit into either the etiology or Experimental Syntax debates.

6.1.4.1 Significance

While methodological questions like the ones touched upon in this questionnaire are sometimes debated in linguistics, they do not take up much space, and the etiology question is rarely discussed. It would be interesting to know whether the issues touched upon in the questionnaire are important to linguists who use linguistic intuitive judgements as evidence or who believe that linguistic intuitive judgements may have that role. To answer this, participants were asked the following question:

Question 14: Significance 1

Can you think of a situation, before answering this survey, where you thought about whether syntactic intuitions can serve as evidence for theories of grammar?

1. Yes 2. No

3. [Supply other answer]

The distribution of the answers to this question is presented in table 6.30.

Answer Yes No

Frequency 70 (96%) 3 (4%)

Table 6.30: Significance 1 (Q14), distribution of answers, generative group The answers were not equally distributed,χ²(1, n= 73) = 61.5, p < .001.¹⁵ The effect size was very large with V = .92. An overwhelming majority of participants (96%) answeredYes.

11 participants gave optional comments on question 14. 7 of the comments (63%) give details of the circumstances under which participants have thought about the topic of the questionnaire. 3 comments (27%) mention the partici- pant’s reasons for giving thought to this question, including worries about extra- grammatical factors such as mathematical reasoning or prescriptivist attitudes interfering with linguistic intuitive judgements. An overview of the content analysis for the optional comments to question 14 is given in table 6.31.

Theme Example No. %

When in my own experiments on the topic :) 7 64%

Why I have become worried that speakers can use extra grammatical reasoning, for instance mathematical reasoning, on things like quan- tifier scope.

3 27%

Significance If anyone claims to be a linguist and answers

‘no’ to the above question then one must ques- tion whether they are, in fact, a linguist.

1 9%

Total 11 100%

Table 6.31: Significance 1 (Q14), optional comments, generative group Participants were also asked to indicate their level of agreement with the following statement:

Question 15: Significance 2

Linguists who use intuitions as evidence should set aside time to considerwhy intuitions can serve as evidence for their theories.

1. Strongly agree

151 participant chose theotheroption and wrote “Yes” as their answer. This was recoded as the optionYes.

2. Somewhat agree

3. Neither agree nor disagree 4. Somewhat disagree 5. Strongly disagree

The distribution of the answers to this question is presented in table 6.32.

Answer Agree Neither Disagree Frequency 65 (89%) 3 (4%) 5 (7%)

Table 6.32: Significance 2 (Q15), distribution of answers, generative group For question 15, we also see a very large majority indicating that these issues are important by choosing agree (in total 89%). The answers are not equally distributed, χ²(2, n = 73) = 102, p < .001. The effect size, V =.84, is again very large. The post-hoc pairwise comparisons showed thatagreeis significantly more frequent than bothneither (V =.91) anddisagree (V =.86).

It is possible that the very high level of agreement among participants on these questions is a side-effect of the informal sampling method, where only people who find this topic interesting self-selected to participate in the ques- tionnaire (and those who did not find it interesting did not). It is not possible to say whether this pattern would replicate with a randomly chosen sample of linguists, however it seems likely that such a strong effect would not be repli- cated.

12 participants gave optional comments on question 15. 9 (75%) out of these participants elaborated on why they answeredStrongly agreeorSomewhat agree, most of them by noting that reflecting on the data one uses is standard across scientific disciplines. An overview of the content analysis for the optional comments to question 15 is given in table 6.33.

Theme Example No. %

Agree, elaborate In the sense that all scientists should always take care and be reflective about methodology.

9 75%

Depends It totally depends on the phenomenon one wants to analyze.

2 17%

Disagree, elaborate Intuitions can tell us something about grammars, that’s true. In my opinion, the question is what, not why. [...]

1 8%

Total 12 100%

Table 6.33: Significance 2 (Q15), optional comments, generative group

I take the participants’ answers to these two questions (Q14 and Q15) to mean that the issues touched upon in the questionnaire are seen as significant by the participants. As mentioned, the overwhelming agreement on these questions might be a side-effect of the self-selection of participants: People who do already think the issue is important and worthwhile might be more likely to self-select to participate in the questionnaire. As such, the numbers reported here cannot be generalised to the linguist population at large. At least, though, they show that at least some proportion of linguists working with this type of data think that it is an interesting and important question why linguistic intuitive judgements can be used as evidence for grammatical theories.

6.1.4.2 Further comments

At the end of the questionnaire, participants were asked if they wanted to make any further comments on the topic of the questionnaire. 17 participants from the generative group did. 9 (53%) of these commented on the questionnaire, some pointing out things that could be improved, and others remarking that they found the topic interesting. Another 6 comments (35%) summed up a central part of the participant’s view on linguistic intuitive judgements. The last 2 comments (12%) were about the importance of the topic to linguists. For an overview of these comments, see table 6.34.

Theme Example No. %

Comment on question- naire

I find that some of the given options suggest a binarity that just doesn’t exist. [...]

9 53%

Central point

If native speakers’ intuitive judgements cannot be used as evidence in linguistics, what at all can be?

6 35%

Significance I think that linguists do not typically think about these issues

2 12%

Total 17 100%

Table 6.34: Further comments on the topic of the questionnaire, generative group