"S. F. Thomas" <sf.thomas@verizon.net> writes:> > See my comment on the use of a degree scale vs the use of a yes/no > response for purposes of evaluating calibrational propositions in my > response to Joe Pfeiffer in this thread. To repeat briefly: > utterances > come whole, not in degrees, and the calibrational question should > in my opinion reflect that, if what we are attempting to do is to > model actual language use. Having said that, I readily admit that our > modeling can jump from meta-language to meta-meta-language if our > experiments are designed to measure not subjects' own actual use, but > rather their estimates of overall population use, which is what I > think > a degree response captures. That is interesting too. But I think it > is > better to start with the fundamental (the subject's own use), rather > than with his estimate of behavior for the population as a whole ... > let the modeler do that, rather than the subject.
But utterances do come in degrees -- that, to me, is the whole point. When we say ``the water is pretty hot'' the ``pretty'' is qualifying the ``hot.'' I'll agree that the questions should try to capture the subject's own use -- but the question, ``on a scale of 0 to 10, to what extent would you say Ringo is tall?'' seems like it would better capture it than ``is John tall? No, you're not allowed to say `sort of,' say yes or no.'' -- Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605 Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002 New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer SWNMRSEF: http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair