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It is universally accepted that the progress made by generative linguists since the late 1950s represents a significant leap in our understanding of natural language syntax. The powerful methodology wielded by generative linguists played – and continues to play – a hugely important role in this rapid advancement. In this section, we describe how the core principles of generative linguistics, which were outlined by Chomsky in the 1950s and 1960s, yielded a research methodology whose core features guarantee quick and fruitful syntactic research.

The founding dictum of generative linguistics is that linguists should study grammars, where a grammar of a particular language L is understood as a set of rules for generating the sentences that constitute L (Chomsky 1955 et seq.). From the late 1950s onward, Chomskyan generative grammar has also adopted a rationalist conception of language (Chomsky 1958, 1959), according to which “a grammar of a particular language must be supplemented by a universal grammar [our emphasis] that accommodates the creative aspect of language use and expresses the deep‐seated regularities which, being universal, are omitted from the grammar itself” (Chomsky 1965, 6). This engenders a linguistic research program with two main goals: I. to specify the rules that generate all and only the grammatical sentences in a given language L (we return to the concept of grammaticality momentarily), and II. to determine which of these rules belong to the universal grammar and which are specific to L.

These two goals are directly reflected in the research methodology employed by generative linguists from the 1950s until today. The first goal is reflected in the choice of data‐type used for generative linguistic research, while the second is reflected in the methodological outlook adopted by generative researchers.

To accomplish goal I., a linguist will (ideally): (i) hypothesize a grammar for L and then (ii) test to see if it correctly generates all and only the grammatical sentences in L. To successfully carry out this test, a linguist must know beforehand the grammatical status of sentences through an independent test to avoid introducing circularity into the methodology described above. This independent test comes from acceptability judgments. Acceptability judgments are reports provided by a native speaker of their spontaneous reaction concerning whether a particular string of words (with an intended interpretation) is a possible sentence of their language. Generative linguistics has used acceptability judgments as its primary data source since its inception (Chomsky 1955, 1957), treating these judgments as a valid and valuable source of information about the grammaticality of a sentence. In other words, generative linguistics has always assumed that the reaction triggered by exposure to a candidate sentence of one's native language can help determine whether the sentence can or cannot be generated by that language's grammar.² In addition to this tacit acceptance of acceptability judgments as a valid data‐source, Aspects of the theory of syntax (1965), Chomsky's most cited book on linguistics, explicitly defended their use, arguing that no adequate alternative method of probing linguistic competence was available (at the time) or would likely be discovered, and that, on the off‐chance that an alternative method was developed, acceptability judgments will still be required as a benchmark against which to test the alternative method's efficacy (p. 18–21). Chomsky therefore highlights that acceptability judgments are the most easily obtained source of ungrammatical sentences, which are indispensable for conducting the everyday task of generative research, namely developing accurate characterizations of grammars.³

Accomplishing the second main goal of generative linguistic research has been regularly delayed by Chomsky's periodic refinement or revision of his conception of the universal grammar and its relation to language‐specific grammars (Chomsky 1970, 1977, 1981, 1986b, 1995). Despite periodic conceptual changes, the methodological outlook used for pursuing this goal has remained constant. One aspect of this outlook is the adoption of a working method in which productive patterns observed in one language are presumed to be present in all languages until empirical evidence proves otherwise. Because discovering the properties of the universal grammar is more pressing than discovering the rules of the ancillary language‐specific grammar from a rationalist perspective such as Chomsky's (as the universal grammar is innate whereas the language‐specific grammar is learned), another aspect of this outlook is its focus on linguistic regularities, or “core language” (Chomsky 1986a, 147).

In sum, the theoretical commitments emplaced by Chomsky in the late 1950s and early 1960s engendered a research methodology in which informally collected acceptability judgments are used to make generalizations over linguistic regularities. Considering that acceptability judgments are reliable, relatively unequivocal (see the references in endnote 3), and are quickly obtained (especially if a linguist is collecting judgments from herself and/or a small group of consultants), and that the rationalist principles underpinning the generative paradigm has given linguists warrant to make universal claims from studying one language that they know well (usually their native tongue), it is unsurprising that this methodology yields new data, generalizations, and analyses at an extremely rapid rate. Equally, it is unsurprising that its initial application in the early days of generativist syntax to what was then an uncharted empirical landscape of syntactic regularities resulted in most of the profound – and therefore the most enduring – discoveries of generative syntax.