Grammaticality judgments in research, teaching and community engagement:: how to popularize the methodology of the generative analysis in the (on-going) teaching formation

Abstract

Developing teaching, research and community engagement in a harmonious and integrated way is the main goal of the public university institution in Brazil. The paper explores such a possibility based on the research, teaching and community engagement activities promoted by LaCaSa - the Syntactic Cartography Lab: Research and Teaching, one of the research groups of the Institute of Language Studies at the University of Campinas, UNICAMP. Our main goal here is to argue that the integration of these three fundamental activities of the public higher education in the country is possible if one takes into account some aspects of the same research developed by the university institution. In our case, that is done through the methodology guiding the research activities of our laboratory, namely the methodology of Generative grammar. This methodology has, in the grammaticality judgments, its main methodological tool. This tool is illustrated on the basis of Portuguese sentences. We argue that such a methodological device used in research can be implemented in teaching—in courses involving linguistic analysis in undergraduate levels—and in community engagement programs...