Judgments of grammaticality of sentences with a differing number of arguments: A comparison of English and Japanese speakers

This study explored native speakers' linguistic intuition as revealed in ju dging the grammaticality of sentences. Speakers of English (n=36) and Japan ese (n=57) judged the relative grammaticality of sentences involving a verb which occurred together with one, two or three arguments. Findings showed that English speakers were more affected by the number of arguments in sent ences. They judged sentences having three arguments as grammatical most oft en and ones having one or two arguments as grammatical less often. However, Japanese speakers gave rather similar and more grammatical judgments regar dless of the number of arguments in sentences. The findings indicate a diff erence in tightness of argument structure in the two languages even when th e sentences judged are simple sentences and they are given without any sent ential context.