Grammatical norm violations (GNVs), such as hun ‘them’ as a subject in Dutch, are unique, because these constructions frequently occur in everyday Dutch, while they are considered incorrect according to prescriptive grammar. Among native speakers variation exists to what extent they use these constructions. Higher-educated native speakers, for example, tend to use these constructions to a lesser extent than lower-educated speakers. Some GNVs, however, are found to be used more often by higher-educated speakers than lower-educated speakers (i.e. hen ‘them’ as an indirect object instead of hun ‘them’, Hubers et al., 2020). So far, only a few studies addressed this kind of variation. Moreover, the extent to which participants use and disapprove of GNVs probably depends on more participant characteristics than only educational level (e.g., age and region of residence).
The current study investigates to what extent variation between GNVs and between participants can be observed in judgement data. Inspired by Schoenmakers (2023), we set up an online judgement experiment in which we asked participants to rate the aesthetics and probability of three GNVs that vary in the amount of attention they receive in society and in the extent they are disapproved of. In my talk, I present data from a pilot study among university students and especially focus on between-GNV variation. The idea is to later administer this online experiment to a large group of native speakers of Dutch that vary in their demographic characteristics in order to also systematically investigate between-participant variation.