Gradient well-formedness

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Gradient well-formedness is a problem that arises in the analysis of linguistic data, in which a linguistic entity is neither completely grammatical nor completely ungrammatical. A native speaker may judge a word, phrase or pronunciation as "not quite right" or "almost there", rather than dismissing it as completely unacceptable or fully accepting it as well-formed. Thus, the acceptability of the given entity lies on a "gradient" between well-formedness and ill-formedness. Some generative linguists think that ill-formedness might be strictly additive, thus trying to figure out universal constraints by acquiring scalar grammaticality judgements from informants. Generally, however, gradient well-formedness is considered an unsolved problem in linguistics.

[edit] References

• Featherston, Sam 2004. "Judgements in syntax: Why they are good, how they can be better". http://www.sfb441.uni-tuebingen.de/~sam/papers/DGfS04.handout.pdf. Accessed April 9, 2008
• Hayes, Bruce P. August 1997. "Gradient Well-Formedness in Optimality Theory". http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/gradient.pdf. Accessed September 20, 2006