1.1.3 Why Magnitude Estimation?

Magnitude Estimation has found a way to compensate for the inability of human beings to make absolute judgements when, for instance, determining line lengths by giving informants the opportunity to pass more reliable relative judgements. Rather than giving exact ratings, subjects are asked to evaluate stimuli in relation to a reference item, by ascertaining, for example, solely a line's proportional length. At the same time, Magnitude Estimation proves to be a reliable method for gaining spontaneous, i.e. authentic introspection data of informants who do not need to have special linguistic knowledge. Speakers’ acceptability judgements of sentences give linguists information about the actual use of language. Accordingly, some linguistic entities might be more central and others more peripheral, whereas more central exemplars of a prototypical concept can also be expected to receive higher acceptability judgements than less typical ones.

Created with the Personal Edition of HelpNDoc: Easily create HTML Help documents