Читать книгу Syntax - Andrew Carnie - Страница 16

Many linguists refer to the acceptability judgment task as “drawing upon our native speaker intuitions”. The word “intuition” here is slightly misleading. The last thing that pops into our heads when we hear the term “intuition” is science. Generative grammar has been severely criticized by many for relying on “unscientific” intuitions. But this is based primarily on a misunderstanding of the term. To the layperson, the term “intuition” brings to mind guesses and luck. This usage of the term is certainly standard. When a generative grammarian refers to “intuition”, however, she is using the term to mean “tapping into our subconscious knowledge”. The term “intuition” may have been badly chosen, but in this circumstance, it refers to a real psychological effect. Intuition (as an acceptability judgment) has an entirely scientific basis. It is replicable under strictly controlled experimental conditions (these conditions are rarely applied, but the validity of the task is well established). Other disciplines also use intuitions or judgment tasks. For example, within the study of vision, it has been determined that people can accurately judge differences in light intensity, drawing upon their subconscious knowledge (Bard et al. 1996). To avoid the negative associations with the term intuition, we will use the less loaded term judgment instead.