### Video - You can check out my 5 min video here in the OSF or (with captions) on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4IkH-qi_gA ### Get in touch! - Q&A here in the OSF comment section **Friday 12:10 - 2:00** - Also on twitter: https://twitter.com/AnyDs - specifically at this thread: https://twitter.com/AnyDs/status/1240653416646561792?s=20 - And **asyncronously** via email: aniello.desanto AT stonybrook.edu ### Other files - Get the paper: https://aniellodesanto.github.io/publications/DeSanto_SCiL20.pdf ### Abstract It is known that the acceptability judgments at the core of current syntactic theories are continuous. The rise of experimental methods in theoretical syntax has renewed the question of whether gradience should be integrated in grammatical models directly (Lau et al. 2017, a.o.), or whether categorical grammars can give rise to gradient effects via extra-grammatical factors (Chomsky 1975, Sprouse et al. 2017). In this sense, computational models make it possible to test how assumptions about fine-grained syntactic details lead to quantifiable predictions for the acceptability of individual sentences. Here, I propose a parser for Minimalist grammars, coupled with complexity metrics measuring memory usage (kobele et al. 2013, Graft et al. 2017), as an effective formal model of how gradient acceptability can arise from categorical grammars. As a proof-of-concept, I model the acceptability judgments for a set of island effects in English, as reported by Sprouse et al. (2012). Importantly, I are not attempting to reduce island effects to processing demands, nor to syntactic factors exclusively. I are “just” exploring the idea that the gradient component of acceptability arises due to processing factors.