Designing Acceptability Judgment Tasks for Second Language Research

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the design of the acceptability judgment task (AJT), an experimental methodology that has long been a standard tool in theoretical linguistics and theory-driven second language (L2) research. It first argues that the AJT is an effective method for investigating speakers' and learners' grammatical knowledge. It then reviews the factors that should be considered and controlled in designing an AJT, distinguishing between intra-linguistic factors affecting the stimulus sentences (e.g., verb type and lexical familiarity) and extra-linguistic factors related to the experimental procedure (e.g., the judgment scale, scale labels, fillers and distractors, presentation order, and instructions). Finally, in connection with the issue of lexical familiarity, the paper discusses the potential of experimental designs employing nonwords and semi-artificial languages.