Effects of instruction on semantic and pragmatic judgment tasks

Sentence judgment tasks are used often in linguistics studies. However, there is no consensus on how significant the effect of instruction such tasks: some argue that trivial, while others they affect way participants respond. In this study, we investigate different keywords sentence and determine which keyword best teases apart speakers' response to semantically pragmatically licit illicit sentences. We test English Mandarin, exploring possibility cross-linguistic variation speakers respond keywords. Our results show common semantic pragmatic as 'natural' do distinguish violations for speakers, but Mandarin translations these words fail between two types violations. highlight need language- study-specific norming procedures tasks.