Decomposing Gradience: Quantitative versus Qualitative Distinctions

This chapter characterizes the critical phenomena from a behavioural perspective before turning to experimental methods, yielding more finegrained data. It examines how linguistic judgments emerge from the realtime comprehension processes by drawing upon studies of word order variation in German. Based on a number of empirical observations, it argues that gradient data need not be interpreted as evidence against categorical grammars. Instead, gradience can come from a complex interaction between grammar-internal requirements, processing mechanisms, general cognitive constraints, and the environment within which the judgment task is performed.