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Acceptability judgments still matter: Deafness and documentation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2017

Matthew L. Hall ,
Rachel I. Mayberry  and
Victor S. Ferreira
Matthew L. Hall
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1145. matthall.research@gmail.comhttp://matthallresearch.com
Rachel I. Mayberry
Affiliation:
Linguistics Department, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037. rmayberry@ucsd.eduhttp://mayberrylab.ucsd.edu/
Victor S. Ferreira
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037. vferreira@ucsd.eduhttp://lpl.ucsd.edu/
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Abstract

The target article's call to end reliance on acceptability judgments is premature. First, it restricts syntactic inquiry to cases were a semantically equivalent alternative is available. Second, priming studies require groups of participants who are linguistically homogenous and whose grammar is known to the researcher. These requirements would eliminate two major research areas: syntactic competence in d/Deaf individuals, and language documentation. (We follow the convention of using deaf to describe hearing levels, Deaf to describe cultural identity, and d/Deaf to include both. Our own work has focused on Deaf signers, but the same concerns could apply to other deaf populations.)

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e293
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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