Yale Grammatical Diversity Project
We approach the empirical domain of North American English from the perspective of generative microcomparative syntax. Thus, as a starting point, we are interested in understanding the mental grammars of individual speakers, modeled as a system of rules that can form some linguistic units (syllables, words, sentences, etc.) but not others. As generative linguists, we are ultimately interested in a theory of what is a possible system of rules for a human language. Studying dialect variation provides a special opportunity to understand how flexible and/or rigid the set of possible human languages can be, because dialect variation allows us to see which aspects of language can vary independently of others. This overall perspective guides our project, where we conduct several kinds of research. In addition to conducting smaller case studies of individual speakers’ judgments, we have spent several years administering surveys online to collect acceptability judgment data. These data have been used to as a source for our theoretical work and more descriptively-oriented work. For example, we have several studies that are focused primarily on how to visualize the results geographically and analyze the geographic variation statistically. We also have several studies that are entirely non-geographic, and focus on what the quantitative facts tell us about the grammar. Finally, we have studies that combine both of these, and discuss what geographic analysis can tell us about the theory of grammar. We are, in general, constantly working to find new ways to connect quantitative data, geographic analysis, and syntactic theory.