July 27, 2008
Chapter 3
Theory and Methodology
1. Introduction
The starting point of the research presented in this book is the model of the Computational System (CS), put forth in Chomsky 1993, whose input is a numeration (a set of items taken from the mental Lexicon) and whose outputs are a PF and an LF representations, underlying 'sound' and 'meaning', respectively. By taking the informants' linguistic intuitions to be a primary source of data for the evaluation of a theory of the CS, we commit ourselves to making our hypotheses about the Computational System empirically testable on the basis of the informants' acceptability judgments. This commitment along with the adoption of the essentials of Chomsky's model of CS lead us to the Ueyama model of judgment making by the informant adopted in chapter 2 and how the model of the CS is embedded in it as discussed briefly in chapter 2.
In this chapter, I will first observe and articulate that the adoption of the Ueyama model of judgment making by the informant leads us to a particular conception of the sense of acceptability of example a under interpretation g and address various consequences of adopting such a model. In section 2, after introducing the Ueyama model of judgment making by the informant, I will discuss a particular conception of the sense of acceptability as a consequence of adopting the Ueyama model of judgment making, I will address two distinct attributes of informants that we must pay close attention to in order to conduct a reliable experiment and to properly assess the results of an experiment. In section 3, two consequences of the conception of the sense of acceptability will be addressed. One is the observation that, roughly put, what is ungrammatical always surfaces as being unacceptable while what is grammatical may or may surface as being acceptable. The other is that the degrees of 'resourcefulness' differ among the informants and especially between the researcher and the average non-linguist informant. In sections 4-6, I will address how to derive empirical consequences from hypotheses about the CS and test them on the basis of the informants' intuitions (section 4), how predictions are made and evaluated (section 5), and finally, how hypotheses are to be assessed (section 6). The discussion in these sections builds on what will be presented in sections 2 and 3. Finally in section 7, I will address what could be done if our empirical predictions are not borne out, articulating, and in some respects revising, the view suggested in chapter 2 in regard to repeatability. What is suggested in section 7 is also based on sections 2 and 3, and it also makes reference to the discussion in sections 4-6.
2. Theory of judgment making
2.1. Introduction
The main goal of generative grammar is understood to be the discovery of the properties of the Computational System (CS) whose input is a set of items taken from the mental Lexicon of the speaker and whose output is a pair of mental representations – one underlying 'meaning' and the other 'sounds'.[1]
(1) The Model of the CS:
Numeration ==> CS ==>LF and PF
Once we take informant judgments to be a primary source of data for hypothesis evaluation, we must recognize the following interrelation between a theory of the CS and a theory of how the informant's judgment obtains. The former cannot be empirically evaluated without the latter; considerations about the latter, on the other hand, could be revealing about the properties of the CS only if the former makes crucial reference to the latter. This is recorded in (3).
(2) a. a theory of the CS
b. a theory of how the informant's judgment obtains
(3) a. (2a) cannot be empirically evaluated without (2b).
b. (2b) is useful to an empirical evaluation of (2a) only if (2b) makes crucial reference to (2a).
The relation between (2a) and (2b) can be established if (2a) is embedded within (2b). One way to embed (2a) within (2b) is to assume that the informant, upon seeing or listening to the presented sentence, forms a numeration, and compares the output of the CS with the presented sentence itself along with the interpretation being considered. In the absence of alternative ways (known to us) of embedding (2a) within (2b), we will in fact pursue this possibility, following the recent works by A. Ueyama.[2]
Let us consider how the informants make their judgment on sentence a under interpretation g, focusing on experiments where questions such as those in (4) are part of the instructions to the informants.[3]
(4) a. Is sentence a acceptable under interpretation g?
b. How acceptable is sentence a under interpretation g?
'Interpretation g' in (4) is not meant to be the interpretation of entire a; it is instead meant to be part of the interpretation of sentence a. More in particular, what is intended by 'interpretation g' in (4), throughout this work, is an interpretation involving two linguistic expressions such as an anaphoric relation holding between two expressions. A more accurate way of stating the question in (4a) might therefore be something like "Is sentence a acceptable under an interpretation that includes g?" I will however avoid using such a cumbersome way of phrasing the question and continue to use 'under interpretation g' in the ensuing discussion unless a more precise formulation is crucially needed.
In section 2.2, I will introduce Ueyama's model of judgment making by the informant, the adoption of which we maintain is a consequence of (i) accepting the model of the Computational System adopted here, (ii) committing ourselves to making our hypotheses about the Computational System empirically testable on the basis of the informants' acceptability judgments, and (iii) having the desire to ensure progress toward the goal of discovering the properties of the Computational System. The CS being embedded in a performance model poses inherent difficulty in accessing data that would be revealing about the properties of the CS and the difficulty will be addressed in section 2.2.2.
In section 2.3, a particular conception of the sense of acceptability will be introduced as a consequence of the considerations in section 2.2. In section 2.4, we will recognize that the informant judgments are revealing about the properties of the CS only if the informants pay close enough attention to sentence a and interpretation g. We will further recognize in that section that the informants' resourcefulness may also affect their judgments.
2.2. The model of judgment making and the CS
2.2.1. How the theory of the CS is embedded in the model of judgment making
Consider again the model of the CS in (1), repeated here.
(1) The Model of the CS:
Numeration == CS ==>LF and PF
A theory of the CS is concerned with the properties of the CS: what numeration gets mapped to what LF-PF output, what operations combine the items in the numeration in the derivation, what restrictions, if any, are imposed on such operations, etc. Neither a numeration nor an LF-PF output of the CS is directly accessible to us. What is accessible to us are the informants' reported judgments on the sentences presented to them. Insofar as we take informant judgments to be a primary source of data for constructing and evaluating hypotheses about the CS, it seems natural, if not unavoidable, that ??? in (5) is Numeration == CS ==>LF and PF in (1).
(5) Presented Sentence ≈≈> ??? ≈≈> Judgment
In other words, if the CS plays the central role when the informant makes her judgment on an example sentence, it seems natural to assume that the CS is embedded in the model of judgment making by the informant, as schematized in (6).[4]
(6) Presented Sentence ≈≈> Numeration ==> CS ==>LF and PF ≈≈> Judgment
Recall that if we did not adopt this view, it would not be clear how the model of CS is related to the judgment making by the informant, which in turn would make it unclear in what sense informant judgments can serve as data for research concerned with the properties of the CS.
According to this view, which has been advocated in works by A. Ueyama, the informant forms a numeration in part on the basis of the presented sentence and tries to determine whether the output of the CS on the basis of that numeration is compatible with (i) the phonetic string of the presented sentence and (ii) the 'intended interpretation'.[5] If we choose informants who would always form a numeration that would end up yielding the PF that is compatible with the presented sentence (i.e., those who do not (consciously or unconsciously) 'alter' the presented sentence when judging the presented sentence), we can be concerned only with the aspect of the 'compatibility check' by the informant that has to do with the 'intended interpretation'.[6]
Something must mediate the presented sentence and a numeration. Following Ueyama to appear, we take the sentence presented to the informant to be an input to Parser, which, in part on the basis of word recognition, identifies the argument-predicate relations and the modification relations among the elements in the sentence. We furthermore assume that the output of Parser contributes to, or influences, the formation of a particular numeration.[7] We can thus modify (6) as in (7).
(7) Presented Sentence == Parser ≈≈> Numeration == CS ==>LF and PF ≈≈> Judgment
Assuming that the LF representation gets mapped to a semantic representation (SR) (by the mapping of LF syntactic objects to semantic objects), and suppressing the PF output of the CS in our present discussion, the model of judgment making by the informant can be schematized as in (8).
(8) The Model of Judgment Making by the Informant:
Presented Sentence ==> Parser ≈≈> Numeration == CS ==> LF ==> SR ≈≈> Judgment
As noted above, what is intended within the box in (8) is that the input to the CS is a numeration and its output is an LF representation. The two arrows before and after CS in (7) (and (8)) thus represent the 'is the input of' relation and the 'yields as an output' relation, respectively. Similarly, what is meant by the arrow between LF and SR is that LF is the input to the mapping operations that yield SR as its output. A numeration m thus results in LF(m) and eventually in SR(m). The other instances of the arrows in (8) are used more loosely, as indicated in (9).
(9) a. Presented Sentence ==> Parser: ... is part of the input to ...
b. Parser ≈≈> Numeration: ... contributes to the formation of ...
c. SR ≈≈> Judgment: ... serves as a basis for ...
Let us review the model of judgment making by the informant adopted here. The informant is presented with sentence a and is asked a question such as (4a), repeated here.
(4) a. Is sentence a acceptable under interpretation g?
For example, the question can be "Is John thinks Mary loves himself acceptable under the interpretation that John and himself refer to the same individual?."[8] The presented sentence is part of the input to Parser since interpretation g as well as the informant's world knowledge might also help Parser identify the argument-predicate relations and the modification relations among the elements in the sentence; see (9a).[9] On the basis of such information, Parser helps the formation of a numeration; see (9b).[10] Once numeration m has been determined, the CS yields two output representations LF(m) & PF(m) by the application of some mechanical operations. LF(m) gets mapped to a semantic representation SR(m) by transparent and mechanical application of some mapping rules that convert LF objects to SR objects. Assuming that PF(m) is non-distinct from a, the informant's answer to (4a) is based on whether SR(m) is compatible with g. In that sense, the intended interpretation g as well as SR(m) serve as a basis for the judgment; see (9c).
The view of Parser and its role in the model of judgment making suggested above (although they might appear to be a novel proposal) seem to be direct consequences of the fundamental assumptions and commitment in generative grammar. Recall that according to the model of the CS adopted here, the input to the CS is a numeration (i.e., a set of items taken from the Lexicon, possibly along with some features) and its two output representations are LF and PF (representations).
(1) The Model of the CS:
Numeration ==> CS ==>LF and PF
(10) The CS:
Input = Numeration m
Output = LF(m) & PF(m)
Once we accept that the informant judgments are a primary source of data for the evaluation of the theory of the CS, it is necessary to embed the CS in the model of judgment making. Once the CS is assumed to be embedded within the model of judgment making, the presented sentence, along with the 'intended interpretation', must contribute to the formation of the numeration, as also noted above. Hence the conception of Parser adopted here is also a consequence of adopting the basic assumptions adopted here.
2.2.2. Difficulty in 'accessing' data about the CS
2.2.2.1. Introduction
When presented sentence a and asked whether a is acceptable under interpretation g, the informant tries to come up with numeration m primarily on the basis of a and g such that m would serve as the input to the CS. As noted, we assume that as long as the informant pays close enough attention to the form of a – i.e., as long as the informant is indeed judging the presented sentence – the PF(m), if it obtains, necessarily corresponds to a. Given that LF is a basis of 'meaning', it is reasonable to assume that the informant obtains the 'meaning' of a on the basis of LF(m), and such a 'meaning' is referred to here as SR(m). The informant then determines whether the SR(m) is compatible with g in (4a).[11] If it is, the answer to (4a) is yes; and otherwise, the answer is no. The informant's sense of acceptability on sentence a under interpretation g is thus based on whether or not the informant can 'come up with' numeration m on the basis of a such that SR(m) compatible with g obtains. Recall that that numeration m is the input to the CS and SR(m) is directly based on the output of the CS (LF(m )). Since the relation between m and SR(m) is thus determined mechanically by the CS, information regarding the relations between numerations and SRs would contribute to our understanding of the properties of the CS.