Using two-alternative force choice tasks and Thurstone's law of comparative judgments for code-switching research
Stadthagen-Gonzalez, Hans (University of Southern Mississippi)
López, Luis (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Parafita Couto, M. Carmen (Leiden University. Center for Linguistics)
Parraga, Carlos Alejandro (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Date:	2018
Abstract:	This article argues that 2-alternative forced choice tasks and Thurstone's law of comparative judgments (Thurstone, 1927) are well suited to investigate code-switching competence by means of acceptability judgments. We compare this method with commonly used Likert scale judgments and find that the 2-alternative forced choice task provides granular details that remain invisible in a Likert scale experiment. In order to compare and contrast both methods, we examined the syntactic phenomenon usually referred to as the Adjacency Condition (AC) (apud Stowell, 1981), which imposes a condition of adjacency between verb and object. Our interest in the AC comes from the fact that it is a subtle feature of English grammar which is absent in Spanish, and this provides an excellent springboard to create minimal code-switched pairs that allow us to formulate a clear research question that can be tested using both methods.
Rights:	Tots els drets reservats.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió acceptada per publicar
Subject:	Acceptability judgment ; Code-switching ; Two-alternative forced choice and Thurstone's law
Published in:	Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Vol. 8, Issue 1 (January 2018) , p. 67-97, ISSN 1879-9272

DOI: 10.1075/lab.16030.sta

Postprint 32 p, 811.0 KB

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