Section 1 of Chapter 6 is as follows: (The formatting is lost, and the footnotes are not provided here.)
*** In this and the next chapter, I will illustrate how we have obtained Experimental results that are very close to, or precisely in accordance with, our definite and categorical predictions in the form of predicted schematic asymmetries. The demonstration will be crucially based on the notions introduced in the preceding chapters, especially the idea of Main- and Sub-Experiments and informant classification based on the results of Sub-Experiments. Section 2 reviews how the predicted schematic asymmetries tested in our Main-Experiment have been deduced. Our Main-Experiment is concerned with structural hypotheses about FD, whose hypothesized properties we try to investigate by checking the availability of a particular dependency interpretation of BVA(A, B), with specific choices for A and B. The section provides the design of the Main-Experiment, including its Schema groups and Lexical groups, along with its result without informant classification. Section 3 offers initial illustration of informant classification, including its justification and effects. The idea behind informant classification in interpreting the result of our Main-Experiment, based on the result of its Sub-Experiments, is that we want to pay attention to the informants whose judgments in the Main-Experiment are significant with respect to its Main-Hypotheses. One of the Sub-Experiments for our Main-Experiment EPSA [31]-4, EPSA [31]-1, is concerned with the lexical hypotheses about FD. The other Sub-Experiment, EPSA [31]-7, is concerned with the effectiveness of the instructions to our informants, including how we express the intended dependency interpretation. In section 3.2, I will report that the informant classification based on the result of EPSA [31]-1 makes the result of our Main-Experiment EPSA [31]-4 significantly closer to our prediction. I will also report that the result of EPSA [31]-1 in turn becomes considerably closer to our definite and categorical prediction than its "original" result with informant classification based on EPSA [31]-7. In section 4, I turn to the effects of informant classification based on across-occasion reproducibility in individual informants' reported judgments. We pay attention to whether an individual informant's reported judgments on the same set of Examples in the same Experiment are consistently in accordance with our predictions when the same Experiment is conducted at different times. We will observe that, by paying attention to across-occasion reproducibility in the result of our Sub-Experiments, the results of our Main-Experiment can become quite close to, or precisely in accordance with, our definite and categorical prediction. The discussion up to this point is concerned with *Schema-based predictions, which are the most crucial part of the predicted schematic asymmetry. The okSchema-based prediction, however, also plays a vital role in language faculty science. Suppose the %(Y) on Schema B is 0. That does not disconfirm the *Schema-based prediction. But if the %(Y) on Schema A is also close to 0, we cannot attribute the %(Y) on Schema B being 0 to the grammatical reasons hypothesized to underlie the predicted schematic asymmetry. As it turns out, the %(Y) on Schema A in one of the two Schema groups in EPSA [31]-4 is rather high (26%) in its result without informant classification. We will observe in section 5 how informant classification affects the %(Y) on the Schema A in question. More specifically, we will demonstrate that informant classification can result in a higher %(Y) on Schema A than in the "original" result. The demonstration in this section provides support for the level of LF representation as a formal basis of meaning, as postulated in the model of the CS in Chomsky 1993. I have stressed in Ch. 4: section 5 and Ch. 5: section 5.1 that informant classification is not for the purpose of obtaining the predicted Experimental results but it is for the purpose of obtaining Experimental results that are as reliable as possible. In sections 3-5, the informant classifications do lead to results that are in accordance with our predicted schematic asymmetries. The Appendix to this chapter illustrates a case where informant classification fails to give us Experimental results as "predicted." We turn to so-called Binding Condition C/D, whose effects are tested in one of our Sub-Experiments, EPSA [31]-3 (=[31]-10), for our Main-Experiment EPSA [31]-4. We will observe that the results of EPSA [31]-3 and [31]-10 do not come close to the "prediction" about the so-called Binding Condition C/D effects even with the "best" informant classification that we have used in sections 3-5 that have turned the %(Y) on Schema B and the %(I) in EPSA [31]-4 into the predicted 0. Language faculty science deals with I-language. "I" of I-language is meant to stand for the "I" of "individual," "internal" and "intensional"; see Chomsky 1986: 2.3 and 2.4 and Chomsky 2000: 70, 118, for example. The internalist approach to "language" and the language faculty thus leads us to the view that our research efforts should start with an attempt to establish confirmed predicted schematic asymmetries within a single-researcher-informant experiment and to replicate the experimental results in multiple-informant experiments. A natural place for me (a native speaker of Japanese) to start is therefore to deal with Japanese and try to obtain confirmed predicted schematic asymmetries in Japanese with myself as an informant and try to replicate them in multiple-informant experiments. The articulation and the presentation of the proposed methodology in chapters 2-5, however, make reference to English rather than Japanese. The initial empirical/experimental illustration of the proposed methodology in this chapter is also based on English, not Japanese. The tactical decision to make reference to English is due to readability considerations. Assuming that the readers of this book are not necessarily familiar with Japanese, heavy reference to Japanese in the conceptual articulation of the proposed methodology and its initial empirical illustration would make the average reader's task more demanding than necessary. The reliance on English has an unwanted consequence of preventing me from addressing experimental results of a single-researcher-informant experiment with myself being the sole informant. It is hoped that the discussion in the next chapter, where we deal with Japanese, will make up for that shortcoming. |