This is an experiment about English sentences. It will take about 5-8 minutes to complete, and you will be paid $1.50 for your time. This experiment is being conducted by Dr. Jon Sprouse at the University of Connecticut, and has been approved by the UConn Institutional Review Board. Please click here to download a study information sheet (pdf) that contains the UConn IRB's seal of approval.

Basic Info

Part 1: Judging Line Length

Before doing the main part of the experiment, you will do a short task involving judging line length. A series of lines of different lengths will be presented. Your task is to estimate how long they seem by assigning numbers to them. You will make your estimates relative to the first line you will see, your reference line, which will be placed at the top of the page like this:

This reference line is assigned a length of 100. You can now make estimates of other lines using this line as a reference. For example, given that the reference line is 100, you might assign this line 150 because it is about 1.5 times as long as the reference line:

And this one might be 50 because it is only half the length of the reference line:

There is no limit to the range of numbers you may use. You may use any number that you think is correct.

Part 2: Judging Sentences

In part 1 of the experiment you used numbers to estimate the lengths of lines. In part 2 you will use numbers in a similar way to judge how grammatical some English sentences sound to you.

As with the lines in Part 1, you will first see a reference sentence with a judgment of 100 like this:

You should read this sentence, and determine how grammatical it sounds to you. By grammatical, we mean whether you think a native speaker of English could say this sentence. In other words, do you think it would sound odd for your friends to say this to you, as if they don’t speak English natively?

We are not concerned with whether the sentence would be graded highly by a writing teacher: we do not care about points of style or clarity, and we do not care about the grammar rules that you learned in school (who versus whom, ending a sentence with a preposition, etc). Instead, we are interested in whether these sentences could be said by a native speaker of English in normal daily speech.

For each sentence after the reference, you will assign a number to show how grammatical or ungrammatical the second sentence is in proportion to the reference sentence. Here’s an example sentence:

If this sentence seemed twice as grammatical as the reference sentence, you would give it a 200. If it seemed only three quarters as grammatical as the reference, you'd give it a 75. You can use any number that accurately reflects your judgment of the sentence, just like you did with the lines.

There are 31 sentences for you to judge. The reference sentence will be repeated every 7 sentences in bold for your convenience

You are now finished. Please take a moment to make sure that you answered all of the questions. You will only be paid if you rated all of the sentences.