2025/06/22 by Juzek, Tom S, Häussler, Jana
#FOS: Languages and literature #Linguistics #Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics #Social and Behavioral Sciences #grammar theory #linguistics #psycholinguistics #semantics #syntax
paper · doi:10.17605/osf.io/fvwut
This study explores the interplay between syntax and semantics in affecting sentence acceptability. Two rating tasks, a syntactic and a semantic (plausibility/meaningfulness) one, are compared across four phenomena: semantic restriction violations, aspectual mismatches with for-PPs, resumptive pronouns, and semantic contradictions. Anchor items provide calibration across a spectrum of grammaticality and plausibility. Results show cross-contamination between the tasks: semantic anomalies reduce syntactic acceptability, and syntactic anomalies reduce semantic plausibility. The findings further substantiate the notion that the border between syntax and semantics is not clear-cut and that the interface between the two is complex.