Abstract
This paper examines the structure of grammatical knowledge through analyzing the acceptability of English parasitic gap constructions. Judgments on 100 parasitic gap constructions are collected with questionnaires from fifteen native speakers of English. The judgments are analyzed by multiple regression analysis. On the basis of the analysis, this paper claims that plural syntactic constraints simultaneously bear with different weights on the acceptability of parasitic gap constructions. A linear equation that predicts the acceptability of a given parasitic gap construction is proposed. As a general implication, this paper suggests that syntactic constraints as part of the language faculty are additive and with different importance.
