Study 4b: Method 1 Overview

Adults took part in a graded judgement task in which they rated the acceptability of dative, figure-locative, and ground-locative sentences

containing low-frequency verbs. The grammatical and ungrammatical figure- locative and ground-locative sentences were included for use as fillers. The dative sentences in the task were the same as those prime sentences presented in the structural priming task in study 4a, and were all grammatical.

4.6.2. Participants

Forty-three monolingual English-speaking adults were recruited from the University of Liverpool student participation pool. Participants were tested in groups of five in the language development laboratory at the University of Liverpool, and were different to those who took part in Study 4a.

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4.6.3. Design and Materials 4.6.3.1. Design

The study used a 2 x 2 design. The two within-subjects variables were Sentence Type (DOD and PD), and Verb Bias (DOD- and PD-biased). The dependent variable for the descriptive analysis was the mean acceptability rating for each sentence. For the inferential analyses, the dependent variable was the rating for each sentence (which could range from 1 to 5).

4.6.3.2. Sentence stimuli

The task included a total of 48 sentences of which 24 were experimental. The remaining 24 sentences acted as fillers. The experimental sentences were the same dative sentences that were presented to the participants who took part in study 4a. Thus, 12 of these dative sentences were those in which prime verb bias and structure were matched (e.g., DOD-biased verb in DOD structure), and 12 of these were those in which prime verb bias and structure were mismatched (e.g., DOD-biased verb in PD structure). The filler items were a mixture of figure- and ground-locatives and were chosen because they have similar grammaticality ratings to the experimental sentences (ratings taken from Bidgood, Ambridge, Pine, & Rowland, 2014). The sentences were semi-randomized.

4.6.3.3. Rating scale

The five-point rating scale (see figure 4.2) for acceptability was one that has been successfully used with adults in other studies (e.g., Ambridge et al., 2012). The scale consists of five faces that change expression progressively

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say’, and happy is equivalent to ‘perfect; something that I would say’). Each participant was given five sheets of A4 paper on which were seven trial sentences, and 48 test sentences. Each sentence was presented above an image of the rating scale.

Figure 4.2 Five-point rating scale for acceptability with trial sentence above as presented to participants

4.6.4. Procedure

4.6.4.1. Practice session

Participants were tested in groups of five. Before they rated the sentences, they were given detailed instructions to explain the scale, including why a sentence might be rated as acceptable or unacceptable, as well as factors that should not be taken into account when rating a sentence (Schütze, 1996). To familiarize them with the process of using the scale and rating the sentences, participants took part in a practice session in which they

observed and rated trial sentences that were different to the ones in the real test session (see Table 4.3).

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Table 4.3 Sentences presented to participants during the practice session

Trial Sentence type Sentence Completed

by

Rating

a _{passive The queen was impressed by the maid Experimenter 5} b ground-locative The boy nailed the wall with posters Experimenter 1 c _{passive The city was surrounded by hills Participant 5} d ground-locative The policeman spilt the rug with juice Participant 1 e _{active The man tumbled the books off the table Experimenter 3} f _{figure-locative The teacher filled paper into the box Experimenter 2} g figure-locative The sailor covered salt onto his dinner Experimenter 2

The experimenter rated the first two sentences as a demonstration of how to use the scale. Participants were then asked to rate the next two sentences in a similar way to that completed by the experimenter, receiving help from the experimenter should they be seen to using the scale incorrectly. The participants were told that a sentence should be judged as ‘perfect’ (the happiest face; equivalent to five) if they though that the sentence sounded perfectly fine and that it was something that they would probably say; a sentence should be judged as ‘quite good’ (the next happy face; equivalent to number four) if they thought that the sentence was not completely perfect, but was still fairly good. If participants thought a sentence was neither

completely acceptable nor unacceptable, then they were instructed to rate this as ‘neutral’ (the middle face; equivalent to number three). Sentences were to be rated as ‘not great’ (the second sad face; equivalent to number two) if the sentence sounded quite strange and participants thought that would probably not ever say it. Finally, participants were told that sentences that sounded awful and were ones that think that thought would never be produced, were to be rated as ‘really bad’ (the saddest face; equivalent to number one). The aim of the training was to eliminate any participants who

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participants were able to satisfactorily use the scale.

4.6.4.2. Test session

Participants were informed that the experimenter would read a series of sentences aloud, giving them only a few seconds to rate each one before moving on to the next. Limiting the amount of time possible to rate each sentence, means that participants are less likely to take pragmatic

considerations and linguistic norms into account in their ratings (Schütze, 1996). Participants were instructed to read each sentence silently while listening to it being read by the experimenter, and then to rate each one by marking a tick in the box under the face on the scale that corresponded with how acceptable they found that sentence.