Grammatical Acceptability in Mandarin Chinese

In this chapter, we address the issues related to sentence grammaticality and acceptability. We begin with a discussion of the relationship between the two notions, and point out that despite the differences in theoretical conceptualization, the two notions, grammaticality and acceptability, are often confluent and that grammaticality is usually measured as acceptability in linguistic research. We then discuss factors beyond syntax that may influence sentence acceptability, including processing factors and semantic/pragmatic considerations. Finally, we discuss the measurement of acceptability, via either experimental methods or corpus-based analyses. To conclude, we show in this chapter how grammaticality, a seemingly purely syntactic notion, is often materialized as acceptability, which encompasses multiple linguistic modules that go beyond syntax.