This study explored an anchoring effect in judging the grammaticality of sentences violating the subjacency condition. Target sentences judged consisted of two types of sentences: one type included an embedded clause that expressed the subjective experience of a matrix NP, while the other type did not. The anchoring effect was partially found. Thus, regardless of the sentence types, the judgments shifted toward the pole of ungrammaticality for both the participants given grammatical anchor sentences and those given basic order sentences, whereas no shift was found far bath the participants given ungrammatical anchor sentences and those given transformed. Further, the judged grammaticality of the sentences not violating the subjacency condition was not as low as predicted. Implications of the findings were discussed as they were related to Chomsky's contention that speakers possess knowledge of this condition.

Key words: grammaticality judgments, anchoring effect, subjacency condition