grammaticality
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In linguistics, grammaticality is conformity to grammar. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formulate rules that define well-formed, grammatical sentences. These rules of grammaticality also provide explanations of ill-formed, ungrammatical sentences.
~26 min read
Encyclopedic overview
29 sectionsContents
- Background
- Criteria that determine grammaticality
- Criteria that do not determine grammaticality
- Grammaticality versus acceptability
- Gradience in acceptability
- Frequency affects acceptability
- Other factors that determine acceptability
- Norm-based evaluation
- Use of grammaticality judgments
- Research methods of sentence processing
- Computer-assisted language instruction
- Assessing first language (L1) competence
- Assessing second language (L2) competence
- Performance-related factors
- Age-related factors
- Reliability of L2 grammaticality judgments
- Confounding factors in grammaticality judgements
- Subject-related factors
- Handedness
- Task-related factors
- Repetition
- Yes/no responses
- Grammaticality illusion
- Cross-linguistic differences
- Possible causes
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
In linguistics, grammaticality is conformity to grammar. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formulate rules that define well-formed, grammatical sentences. These rules of grammaticality also provide explanations of ill-formed, ungrammatical sentences.
In theoretical linguistics, a speaker's judgement on the well-formedness of a linguistic 'string'—called a grammaticality judgement—is based on whether the sentence is interpreted in accordance with the rules and constraints of the relevant grammar. If the rules and constraints of the particular lect are followed, then the sentence is judged to be grammatical. In contrast, an ungrammatical sentence is one that violates the rules of the given language variety.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “grammaticality” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.