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    A fixed ordinal scale does not suffice for recording ling... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    A fixed ordinal scale does not suffice for recording linguistic acceptability judgments.

    Philosophy of Language
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    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

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    • 1.There may be a disproportion between the fineness of judgments people can make and the symbol set available for recording them on a fixed scale.
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    • 2.Interval scales capture relative distances between judgments that fixed ordinal scales cannot represent.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Ordinal scales suffice when the research goal is categorical discrimination rather than magnitude estimation of acceptability differences.
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    • 2.Chomsky's original competence/performance distinction treats grammaticality as binary, making gradient measurement a category error for core linguistic theory.
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    • 3.Empirical adequacy of a measurement scale is relative to the theoretical construct being measured, not an intrinsic property of the scale itself.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Stevens' psychophysical scaling research shows that human judgment reliability degrades with scale complexity, making finer-grained scales less accurate, not more.
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    • 2.The apparent inadequacy of fixed ordinal scales reflects experimenter design failures—anchor calibration and item ordering—rather than intrinsic scale limitations.
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    Philosophy of Language

    Related

    Chomsky's original competence/performance distinction treats grammaticality as b...Empirical adequacy of a measurement scale is relative to the theoretical constru...Interval scales capture relative distances between judgments that fixed ordinal ...Ordinal scales suffice when the research goal is categorical discrimination rath...
    +3 moreShow less
    Stevens' psychophysical scaling research shows that human judgment reliability d...The apparent inadequacy of fixed ordinal scales reflects experimenter design fai...There may be a disproportion between the fineness of judgments people can make a...

    Similar

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    SEP: linguistics
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    By contrast, Bard et al. (1996: 39) point out, it is possible to use interval scales, which additionally measure distance between ordinal positions. Interval scales of acceptability would measure relative distances between strings—how much more or less acceptable one is than another. Magnitude estimation is a method developed in psychophysics to measure subjects’ judgments of physical stimuli on an interval scale. Bard et al. (1996) adapted these methods to linguistic acceptability judgments, ar
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    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
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    1 edit