Abstract
Using the Popperian three-world theory, we draw a general picture of linguistic variables in linguistic data elicitation, judgement, and analysis. To cope with these three worlds of variables, we have two suggestions, namely careful variable control and bigger data size, as well as two reminders with respect to indiscriminate data and proportional conclusions.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jeroen van de Weijer and Lei Zhu for their comments on the previous versions of this paper. All remaining errors are, of course, my own.
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Research funding: This research was sponsored by Research Project of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, China (教育部人文社会科学研究规划基金项目) (Grant no. 24YJA740056), the Shanghai Top Discipline of Type I (Foreign Languages and Literature, China (上海市I类高峰学科 (外国语言文学) 建设项目) (Grant no. 41004525/001) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant no. 2019114030).
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Target Article: Benjamin Macaulay; Issue Editor: Hans-Martin Gärtner
- Speaker judgments alone cannot diagnose syllable structure
- Comments
- Dismantling the universal prosodic hierarchy with possible evidence for the absence of syllables
- Elicitation tasks, language contact, and syllable structure in Budai Rukai
- ‘Direct’ elicitation and phonological argumentation
- Causes and effects of misreported syllable structures
- Intuition, intonation, inconsistency, and innateness
- The reality of Rukai Glides
- Native speakers and syllable structure
- Three worlds of variables to control in linguistics
- Reply
- Issues in systematizing the elicitation and analysis of syllable structure
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Target Article: Benjamin Macaulay; Issue Editor: Hans-Martin Gärtner
- Speaker judgments alone cannot diagnose syllable structure
- Comments
- Dismantling the universal prosodic hierarchy with possible evidence for the absence of syllables
- Elicitation tasks, language contact, and syllable structure in Budai Rukai
- ‘Direct’ elicitation and phonological argumentation
- Causes and effects of misreported syllable structures
- Intuition, intonation, inconsistency, and innateness
- The reality of Rukai Glides
- Native speakers and syllable structure
- Three worlds of variables to control in linguistics
- Reply
- Issues in systematizing the elicitation and analysis of syllable structure