This book by Carson Schütze poses an important question. Are grammaticality
judgments a reliable source of data for linguistic theories? Grammaticality judgments, reliable or
not, have been the main, and most often the only, source of data in linguistic theory for many
years. “‘Because many of the relevant structures are fairly complex and simply
might not arise in the normal course of conversation, or during observation by an
experimenter' (White, 1989, p. 58), UG [Universal Grammar] researchers have
generally relied on some form of grammaticality judgment (GJ) task” (Katrien &
Lantolf, 1992, p. 32). Katrien and Lantolf (1992) pointed out that with this task linguists try to
draw on speakers' intuitions about their competence. Grammaticality judgments consist of
questions about whether a sentence is grammatical according to native speakers. Most often, the
native speaker is the linguist her- or himself as the only subject. Not only can bias exist when
linguists are the source of data for her or his own theories, but also relying on the intuitions of
only one speaker limits the credibility of the theory. When more than one speaker is queried, it
has been shown that consistency is not always guaranteed: variation among and within speakers
is a common feature in judgments (Mohan, 1977; Snow & Meijer, 1977). Idiosyncrasies of
the subjects, presentation of the material, and experimenter's procedure are among the
factors that contribute to this variation in judgments. An underlying problem in linguistic
theorizing comes from the fact that linguists are normally not “trained in methods for
getting reliable data” (p. 4). All this results in theories that are not adequately supported.
Nonetheless, they are used as a springboard for new theories. Schütze provides linguists
with answers to the following questions. What information about language can grammaticality
judgments offer? What factors affect the form of these judgments? What can be done to make the
best use of these judgments?
The empirical base of linguistics: Grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology