Grammatical taboos

This explorative study focuses on grammatical taboos in German, morphosyntactic constructions which are subject to stigmatisation, as they regularly occur in standard languages. They are subjected to systematic experimental testing in a questionnaire study with gradient rating scales on two salient...

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Main Author: Vogel Ralf
Format: Article
Language:deu
Published: De Gruyter 2019-06-01
Series:Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2019-0002
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author Vogel Ralf
author_facet Vogel Ralf
author_sort Vogel Ralf
collection DOAJ
description This explorative study focuses on grammatical taboos in German, morphosyntactic constructions which are subject to stigmatisation, as they regularly occur in standard languages. They are subjected to systematic experimental testing in a questionnaire study with gradient rating scales on two salient and two non-salient grammatical taboo phenomena of German. The study is divided into three subexperiments with different judgement types, an aesthetic judgement, a norm-oriented judgement and the sort of possibility judgement that comes closest to linguists’ understanding of grammar. Included in the investigated material are also examples of ordinary gradient grammaticality: unmarked, marked and ungrammatical sentences. The empirical characteristics of grammatical taboos are compared to those ordinary cases with the finding that they are rated at the level of markedness, but differ from ordinary markedness in that they produce a different pattern of between-subject variance. In addition, we find that grammatical taboos have a particular disadvantage under the aesthetic judgement type. The paper also introduces the concept of empirical grammaticality as a necessary theoretical cornerstone for empirical linguistics. Methodically, the study applies a mix of parametric and non-parametric methods of statistical analysis.
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spelling doaj.art-060373c1af834a15b087de7a1ab60cba2022-12-21T21:34:26ZdeuDe GruyterZeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft0721-90671613-37062019-06-01381377910.1515/zfs-2019-0002zfs-2019-0002Grammatical taboosVogel Ralf0Universität Bielefeld, Fakultät für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, Bielefeld, GermanyThis explorative study focuses on grammatical taboos in German, morphosyntactic constructions which are subject to stigmatisation, as they regularly occur in standard languages. They are subjected to systematic experimental testing in a questionnaire study with gradient rating scales on two salient and two non-salient grammatical taboo phenomena of German. The study is divided into three subexperiments with different judgement types, an aesthetic judgement, a norm-oriented judgement and the sort of possibility judgement that comes closest to linguists’ understanding of grammar. Included in the investigated material are also examples of ordinary gradient grammaticality: unmarked, marked and ungrammatical sentences. The empirical characteristics of grammatical taboos are compared to those ordinary cases with the finding that they are rated at the level of markedness, but differ from ordinary markedness in that they produce a different pattern of between-subject variance. In addition, we find that grammatical taboos have a particular disadvantage under the aesthetic judgement type. The paper also introduces the concept of empirical grammaticality as a necessary theoretical cornerstone for empirical linguistics. Methodically, the study applies a mix of parametric and non-parametric methods of statistical analysis.https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2019-0002experimental morpho-syntaxprescriptionempirical grammaticalitymorphosyntactic markedness
spellingShingle Vogel Ralf
Grammatical taboos
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
experimental morpho-syntax
prescription
empirical grammaticality
morphosyntactic markedness
title Grammatical taboos
title_full Grammatical taboos
title_fullStr Grammatical taboos
title_full_unstemmed Grammatical taboos
title_short Grammatical taboos
title_sort grammatical taboos
topic experimental morpho-syntax
prescription
empirical grammaticality
morphosyntactic markedness
url https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2019-0002
work_keys_str_mv AT vogelralf grammaticaltaboos