English Dialect Survey

Purpose: The purpose of this survey is to decide which of 77 cataloged varieties of English you might speak, in addition to the variety that is used in these instructions (SAE). No one variety is better or worse than any other, but each follows its own unique set of rules about what is possible (i.e. well-formed, grammatical, acceptable) to say.

Task: You see below a Dialect Excerpt (#2) from one of these 77 varieties along with its SAE Gloss (#1) above that. You should mark Acceptable if and only if the following are true:

1. (#2) follows all of the rules and constraints about what is possible to say in your variety of English.
2. (#1) and (#2) can both be used to mean the same (or nearly the same) thing, according to your understanding.

Otherwise, mark Not Acceptable.

Note: the following should NOT be used to decide if an excerpt is Acceptable:

1. Whether or not the excerpt is meaningful.
2. Whether or not you've seen the excerpt before.
3. Whether or not you think it is statistically probable that someone else might say it.
4. Whether or not you think the excerpt is socially acceptable.

Rely only on you understanding of how language works in the particular variety of English you speak.

Tip: You may speak multiple different varieties of English, but this quiz will work best if you focus on just one. To single one out, maybe you can imagine you are speaking only with one particular group of people in one particular setting.

Here, we list some examples of linguistic acceptability judgments for SAE, taken from (Warstadt et al. 2019).

Word Order

• Acceptable: Bo read the book.
• Not Acceptable: Read Bo the book.
• Not Acceptable: Bo the book read.

Subject-Verb Agreement

• Acceptable: My friend has to go.
• Not Acceptable: My friend have to go.

Causative-Inchoative Alternation

• Acceptable: The bubble popped.
• Not Acceptable: The bubble blew.