Appendix: On the Accompanying Website: the last three paragraphs are as follows: (The formatting is lost and the footnotes are not provided here.)
*** This book has an accompanying website (http://www.xxxxx). The purpose of the website is to make it possible for others to examine the validity of the book's empirical claims more thoroughly than is made possible in the preceding pages. As noted in Ch. 6: footnote 2, I only provide summaries of the results of our Experiments, due to space considerations, as they seem to be most informative for the purpose of this book. For each Experiment discussed in this book, the website provides a full description of its design, its Examples, and its result, along with various informant classifications, as discussed in this book. When the Experimental results are provided with an informant classification, the list of informants based on that classification is also provided, with the informants' codenames. The website also provides the "raw data" of the experimental results discussed in this book so that interested people can analyze them on their own. The website is meant to encourage interested readers to conduct a series of Experiments in accordance with their designs and analyze the result of the Main-Experiment in light of the results of the Sub-Experiments. They are encouraged to check how clearly they obtain the replication of the result of the Main-Experiment (on the basis of informant classification in light of the results of the Sub-Experiments) as reported in this book and at the accompanying website. Interested readers are also encouraged to make their own Example sentences in accordance with the specified design of a given Experiment; see Chapter 2: 2.3. The *Schema-based prediction is that no *Examples are acceptable with the intended dependency interpretation no matter how hard we might try to make them acceptable. Suppose that *Examples constructed in accordance with the specified design are not completely unacceptable for the informants whose judgments are deemed significant, in light of their reported judgments in the Sub-Experiments, with regard to the validity of the Main-Hypotheses in the Main-Experiment. Such a result provides us with an opportunity to learn something new, provided that we have tested the validity of each of the hypotheses that give rise to our predicted schematic asymmetry by designing and conducting our prior experiments with utmost care. Taking the internalist approach to language (see Chapter 1), we consider the obtaining of a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry in a single-researcher-informant experiment as the first step toward establishing a fact in language faculty science. A confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry is based on a predicted schematic asymmetry. Predicted schematic asymmetries are given rise to by universal hypotheses, along with language-particular hypotheses and bridging hypotheses. It is in this sense that an individual informant's judgment is revealing about universal properties of the language faculty. It is also in this sense that facts in language faculty science are closely related to our hypotheses about universal properties of the steady state of the language faculty. It may not be an easy matter to obtain an experimental result that constitutes a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry even in a single-researcher-informant experiment. But it is, ultimately, the replication of a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry in a multiple-non-researcher-informant experiment that makes us confident about the validity of our hypotheses that have given rise to the predicted schematic asymmetry. It is also such replication that would prompt us to pay serious attention to the empirical and "factual" claims put forth by others dealing with a language about which we do not have native intuitions. One may in fact suggest that it is the replication of a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry in multiple-non-researcher-informant experiments that would make us hopeful that language faculty science may indeed be possible. As stressed above, the replication of particular judgments by informants on a set of particular Examples is not our concern. We are concerned ultimately with the replication of our experimental results at a more abstract and general level. We are interested in finding out universal properties of the language faculty. We have chosen to work with a dependency interpretation as a probe for that purpose; see Chapter 3 for a conceptual basis for our choice. What type of dependency interpretation can be a good probe for the purpose may differ among languages, and even among speakers of the "same language." In our experiments dealing with individual speakers of a particular language, we check predicted schematic asymmetries given rise to by universal hypotheses, language-particular hypotheses and bridging hypotheses. It is the universal hypotheses among them that would help us understand what universal properties underlie individual informants' judgments on Examples of "different constructions," with "different dependency interpretation," in "different languages." Before we begin to be able to address replicability of our experimental result at such an abstract and general level, however, a great deal of work has to be carried out dealing with particular languages, starting with the establishment and the accumulation of confirmed predicted schematic asymmetries, first in a single-informant experiment and ultimately in multiple-non-researcher-informant experiments. The accompanying website illustrates how such attempts have been made. |