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Normativity in Language and Linguistics
Edited by Aleksi Mäkilähde, Ville Leppänen and Esa Itkonen
[Studies in Language Companion Series 209] 2019
► pp. 213–234

Intuition and beyond

A hierarchy of descriptive methods

From the methodological point of view, linguistics is not a monolith. Nor is it an arbitrary conglomerate of unrelated methods. Rather, the methods most commonly used in linguistic description constitute a definite hierarchy that is motivated both logically and temporally, namely: intuition-based research > corpus research > experimentation. The last stage is in turn divided into loose (i.e. questionnaire method) and strict (e.g. eye movement research). It is the purpose of the present article to justify this thesis in some detail.
Keywords: hierarchy of linguistic methods, intuition-based research, corpus research, experimentation, norms, normativity
Article outline
  • 1.Preliminary remarks
  • 2.The primacy of intuition
    • 2.1Intuition-based linguistics
    • 2.2Normative filters involved in corpus linguistics
  • 3.Beyond intuition
    • 3.1Recourse to corpus
    • 3.2Recourse to questionnaire (plus corpus)
      • 3.2.1Knowledge of semantic networks
      • 3.2.2Knowledge of derivations
      • 3.2.3Knowledge of rare words
  • 4.Strict experimentation
    • 4.1An example
    • 4.2The hierarchy of the methods involved in experimentation
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 4 December 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.209.08paj
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