Can Categorical Grammars Really Derive Gradient Acceptability?

It is well-known that the acceptability judgments at the core of current syntactic theories are continuous. However, an open question is to what extent gradience has to be situated in the grammar itself, or can be derived from extra-grammatical factors (e.g., processing limitations). This paper explores these issues through a model of gradience rooted in the connection between categorical grammars and processing mechanisms, building on a computational framework that links structure-building operations to memory usage. As a proof-of-concept, I leverage structure-sensitive measures of processing effort to evaluate whether categorical representations can derive patterns of gradience, recast as pairwise contrasts, reported in the experimental literature. I show that this approach allows us to derive acceptability differences between items deemed equally well-formed by the underlying categorical grammar. I then discuss the value of this framework for theory evaluation, and for future work on linking hypotheses that fruitfully integrate probabilistic and processing-based insights into the relation between grammaticality and continuous acceptability.