Have you agreed to the Consent form, which informs you about your rights as a participant in this study?
As part of this experiment, we have to collect a small amount of personal information, which we ask you to enter in the Personal Details window once the experiment is started. This information will be treated as confidential, and will not be made available to a third party. None of the responses collected in this experiment will be associated with your name in any way. If you have any questions about this practice, please contact the experimenter.
Note:
Under `Region', please specify the place (city, region/state/province, country) where you have learned your first language
(i.e. where you spent most of your time between the age of 2 and 15 learning your first language).
You can enter several regions in the field.
In the occupation field, in addition to your occupation, please enter where you have heard from
us (e.g. "(AWAD)", or "(FRIEND)"). If you work as a linguist or if you have ever studied linguistics at an advanced
level please also include "(LINGUIST)" in the occupation field. This is very important.
Part 1: Judging Line Length
Before doing the main part of the experiment, you will do a short training session that involves comparing the length of lines.
To begin with, you will see a line of a certain length, as illustrated below. This will be the "reference" line.
You will be asked
to compare the length of other lines that you will see later to the length of this "reference" line.
So, first assign any number you like to this line length (and press 'CONTINUE'),
bearing in mind that some lines seen later will be longer than the
reference and some will be shorter.
You will now see a series of different lines. Assign a number to each following line so that it represents how long the line is in
proportion to the length of the reference line, as it seems to you. If you think the line is longer than the reference, give it a bigger number.
For example, if a line seems about 1.5 times as long as the reference line, give it a number about 1.5 times the reference number
(and press ENTER; there will be no CONTINUE button this time). It's ok that this is just an estimate.
If the line seems about a third as long, enter a
number a third as big as the one you gave to describe the length of the reference line.
There is no limit to the range of numbers you may use. You can use whole numbers or decimals (as long as you choose a positive number).
Parts 2 and 3: Judging Sentences
In Parts 2 and 3 of the experiment you will use numbers to judge the acceptability of some English sentences.
Part 2 is a brief practice session in which you can familiarize yourself with judging sentences.
As with the lines in Part 1, you will first see a reference
sentence, and you can assign it any number that seems appropriate to you.
For each sentence after the reference, you will assign a number to show how natural that sentence sounds in relation to the reference sentence. Use high numbers for `good' sentences, low numbers for `bad' sentences and intermediate numbers for sentences which are intermediate in acceptability.
What we are interested in is how natural you think the structure of the sentence sounds. For example, take the two sentences below:
The situation described by the first example is less likely to happen. But both are perfectly natural English sentences. So you should give them same rating.
We want your first impressions, so don't take too much time to think about any one sentence: try to make up your mind quickly, spending less than 10 seconds on a sentence. This is not a test. Your answers won't be rated as wrong or right.
Comparing the following sentence to the reference, we might assign it a '55' because we think it sounds a bit more than twice as natural.
(again, just an estimate).
A few more points: Try to use a wide range of numbers and to distinguish as many degrees of acceptability as possible. After each number, advance by pressing ENTER. If you mistyped a judgment or you think you would like to change a judgment you gave on an earlier sentence, don't worry too much. Just go on with the rest of the experiment. We will be able to use your data. Don't abort or repeat the experiment.
Following the practice session will be at the main part with the real experiment. Like in the practice session you will be asked to rate sentences for their acceptability.
The experiment consists of the following 3 parts:
The experiment will take 15-20 minutes. After the experiment is completed you will receive an email confirmation of your participation. Please double-check your email address. If the email sent to you after the experiment bounces we will have to ignore that data entered by you. Thank you!
Note that sometimes the experiment may run slowly (e.g. it may take a moment for the next stimulus to be displayed after you pressed 'ENTER'). We apologize for this. Please be patient.
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