Grammaticality

This article addresses the issue of grammaticality according to the main approaches of theoretical linguistics. It firstly presents grammaticality as theorized by formal paradigm and clarifies its distinction from acceptability. Then it describes the notion within the functional-grammar framework. It introduces grammaticality/acceptability judgments as the main empirical method of assessing the grammaticality of a sentence or construct and shows how they operate on the performance-competence interface. Finally, it illustrates the scalar nature of grammaticality and presents the different levels of (a)grammaticality and their correlation with different types of syntactic deviance.