Judgments of Grammaticality as Related to Judgments of Meaningfulness and Ordinariness

Abstract

44 students judged two types of ungrammatical sentences, Kuno's and Chomsky's, for their grammaticality, meaningfulness, and ordinariness. Whether judgments of grammaticality were predicted by the remaining two judgments was explored. Analysis showed that judged grammaticality of Kuno's items was predicted significantly by judged meaningfulness and ordinariness while that of Chomsky's items was predicted only by judged meaningfulness. This indicates that the relative contribution by judged meaningfulness and ordinariness toward predicting judged grammaticality depends on the type of ungrammaticality of the sentences judged.