Remarks on “theoretical” and “experimental” linguistics

We expect both too much and too little from experiments in linguistics, including the recent wave of interest in ‘experimental syntax’. We often encounter the hope that experiments will give us more precise data that will allow us to settle difficult theoretical questions, but such hopes are rarely realized. We believe that this is because we have unrealistic expectations about the ability of experiments to answer questions that syntacticians already had. Meanwhile, researchers have underappreciated the value of experiments for allowing us to address new questions that were not even on our radar previously.