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This paper shows how experimental methods can advance syntactic description and syntactic theory. The empirical domain is the order of verbs in German verb clusters containing a modal verb in the perfect. Such clusters are special insofar as prescriptive grammar requires the finite verb to appear in cluster-initial instead of cluster-final position (e.g., hat lesen müssen 'has read must' instead of lesen müssen hat 'read must has'). Contrary to this requirement, experiments show that native speakers accept the auxiliary also in later positions as long as it precedes the modal verb. The acceptability data are corroborated by corpus data and experimental data from language production. The relevance of the experimental data for syntactic theory are discussed.