On the limits between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences: A response to Demestre

Abstract

In this response to Demestre's comment, we first discuss the terms “legal” and “prohibited,” applied to syntactic structures, stressing that there are boundaries in which the legality of certain constructions appears imprecise and is a matter of discussion. This coalesces with actual and daily use by native speakers of a language, who can normally cross the line between legality and illegality, giving support to the idea that syntactic rules are relatively more flexible than traditionally assumed. Thereafter, we raise the fact that Demestre has omitted important data present in our original paper that make his conclusions inapplicable to our paper.

Keywords:

• Syntax
• Word order
• ERPs
• Brain
• Grammaticality