Introduction to Experimental Linguistics

Christelle Gillioz has a doctorate in psycholinguistics from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and has taught research methodology and experimental linguistics at the University of Bern, Switzerland.Sandrine Zufferey is Professor of French linguistics at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She specializes in the use of empirical methods in linguistics and pragmatics.

• Preface ixChapter 1. Experimental Linguistics: General Principles 11.1. The scientific process 11.1.1. Qualitative and quantitative approaches 31.1.2. Observational research and experimental research 61.2. Characteristics of experimental research 91.2.1. Research questions and hypotheses 91.2.2. Manipulation of variables 111.2.3. Control of external variables 121.2.4. The notions of participants and items 131.2.5. Use of statistics and generalization of results 141.3. Types of experiment in experimental linguistics 151.3.1. Studying linguistic productions 151.3.2. Explicit and implicit measures of comprehension 161.3.3. Offline and online measures of comprehension 171.3.4. Research designs and experimental designs 191.4. Advantages and disadvantages of experimental linguistics 211.5. Where to access research on experimental linguistics 221.6. Conclusion 231.7. Revision questions and answer key 241.7.1. Questions 241.7.2. Answer key 241.8. Further reading 27Chapter 2. Building a Valid and Reliable Experiment 292.1. Validity and reliability of an experiment 292.2. Independent and dependent variables 312.3. Different measurement scales for variables 322.3.1. Qualitative variables 322.3.2. Quantitative variables 342.4. Operationalizing variables 362.5. Choosing a measure for every variable 372.6. Notions of reliability and validity of measurements 412.7. Choosing the modalities of independent variables 442.8. Identifying and controlling external and confounding variables 462.9. Conclusion 502.10. Revision questions and answer key 512.10.1. Questions 512.10.2. Answer key 522.11. Further reading 54Chapter 3. Studying Linguistic Productions 553.1. Differences between language comprehension and language production 553.2. Corpora and experiments as tools for studying production 593.3. Free elicitation tasks 633.4. Constrained elicitation tasks 673.5. Repetition tasks 713.6. Conclusion 753.7. Revision questions and answer key 753.7.1. Questions 753.7.2. Answer key 763.8. Further reading 78Chapter 4. Offline Methods for Studying Language Comprehension 794.1. Explicit tasks 794.1.1. Metalinguistic tasks 804.1.2. Acceptability judgments 844.1.3. Questionnaires 904.1.4. Forced-choice preference tasks 924.1.5. Comprehension tests 954.2. Implicit tasks 974.2.1. Action tasks 984.2.2. Recall tasks and recognition tasks 1014.3. Conclusion 1044.4. Revision questions and answer key 1044.4.1. Questions 1044.4.2. Answer key 1054.5. Further reading 107Chapter 5. Online Methods for Studying Language Comprehension 1095.1. Think-aloud protocols 1095.2. Using time as an indicator of comprehension 1125.3. Priming 1175.4. Lexical decision tasks 1195.5. Naming tasks 1235.6. Stroop task 1255.7. Verification task 1275.8. The self-paced reading paradigm 1285.9. Eye-tracking 1315.10. The visual world paradigm 1365.11. Conclusion 1395.12. Revision questions and answer key 1395.12.1. Questions 1395.12.2. Answer key 1405.13. Further reading 142Chapter 6. Practical Aspects for Designing an Experiment 1436.1. Searching scientific literature and getting access to bibliographic resources 1436.2. Conceptualizing and formulating the research hypothesis 1466.3. Choosing the experimental design 1506.3.1. One independent variable 1506.3.2. Several independent variables: factorial designs 1546.4. Building the experimental material 1566.4.1. Experimental items 1576.4.2. Filler items 1616.4.3. Other aspects of the material 1626.4.4. The concept of lists 1626.4.5. Number of items to be included in an experiment 1646.5. Building the experiment 1646.5.1. Instructions 1656.5.2. Experimental trials 1666.6. Data collection 1686.7. Ethical principles 1716.8. Conclusion 1736.9. Revision questions and answer key 1746.9.1. Questions 1746.9.2. Answer key 1756.10. Further reading 179Chapter 7. Introduction to Quantitative Data Processing and Analysis 1817.1. Preliminary observations 1817.2. Raw data organization 1827.3. Raw data processing 1867.4. The concept of distribution 1877.5. Descriptive statistics 1897.6. Linear models 1927.7. Basic principles of inferential statistics 1957.7.1. The null hypothesis significance testing 1967.7.2. Effect sizes and confidence intervals (CIs) 1977.7.3. Potential errors and statistical power 1987.8. Types of statistical effects 2007.9. Conventional procedures for testing the effects of independent variables 2027.10. Mixed linear models 2067.10.1. Fixed and random effects 2067.10.2. Building mixed models 2097.10.3. Testing a mixed model using R 2107.10.4. Which random structure to choose? 2147.11. Best-practices for collecting and modeling data 2157.12. Conclusion 2177.13. Revision questions and answer key 2187.13.1. Questions 2187.13.2. Answer key 2197.14. Further reading 222References 223Index 239