Comparing Island Effects for Different Dependency Types in Norwegian

Abstract

Recent research suggests that island effects may vary as a function of dependency type, potentially challenging accounts that treat island effects as reflecting uniform constraints on all filler-gap dependency formation. Some authors argue that cross-dependency variation is more readily accounted for by discourse-functional constraints that take into account the discourse status of both the filler and the constituent containing the gap. We ran a judgment study that tested the acceptability of wh-extraction and relativization from nominal subjects, embedded questions (EQs), conditional adjuncts, and existential relative clauses (RCs) in Norwegian. The study had two goals: (i) to systematically investigate cross-dependency variation from various constituent types and (ii) to evaluate the results against the predictions of the Focus Background Conflict constraint (FBCC). Overall we find some evidence for cross-dependency differences across extraction environments. Most notably wh-extraction from EQs and conditional adjuncts yields small but statistically significant island effects, but relativization does not. The differential island effects are potentially consistent with the predictions of the FBCC, but we discuss challenges the FBCC faces in explaining finer-grained judgment patterns.

Extraction from finite adjunct clauses: an investigation of relative clause dependencies in Norwegian

“…We find that forming an rc-dependency into a finite adjunct in Norwegian overall causes island effects, but that there are fine-grained differences within the category 'adjunct'. Specifically, we find that fordi 'because' and når 'when' yield large island effects, while om 'if', on a par with Kobzeva et al (2022) andNyvad et al (2022), yields intermediate results. Rather than relying on binary distinctions only, we argue that any theory that is to explain the empirical landscape must be sufficiently fine-grained and allow for gradient distinctions.…”

“…Nyvad et al (2022) investigated English dem rcs into the same three finite 4 Müller (2019, on Swedish) and Dal Farra (2020, on Italian) also argue that adjunct clauses must be distinguished. 5 Both Kobzeva et al (2022) and Nyvad et al (2022) use the term rc-dependency to refer to the dependency type tested in their studies. Kobzeva et al (2022) provide the term demonstrative rc as an explanation of the type.…”

“…5 Both Kobzeva et al (2022) and Nyvad et al (2022) use the term rc-dependency to refer to the dependency type tested in their studies. Kobzeva et al (2022) provide the term demonstrative rc as an explanation of the type. Nyvad et al (2022) use the same type of dependency in their study.…”

“…Nyvad et al (2022) use the same type of dependency in their study. Because there are substantial differences between the constructions which the rc-dependencies tested in Sprouse et al (2016) and the rc-dependencies tested in Kobzeva et al (2022) and Nyvad et al (2022) appear in, we think it is important to separate the two as they clearly have different properties. The following test based on McCawley (1981) shows that different syntactic operations can apply to these types of rcs.…”

“…Specifically, it has been shown that dependency types might differ in their island sensitivity. A general pattern that has emerged is that finite adjunct clauses are islands for wh-dependencies (Sprouse et al 2012;Sprouse et al 2016;Kush et al 2018;Kohrt et al 2020, though see Kobzeva et al 2022 andChaves &Putnam 2020 (on satiation effects)) but might not be so for relative clause (rc-) dependencies in English (Sprouse et al 2016) or topicalization (top-) dependencies in Norwegian (Kush et al 2019;Bondevik et al 2021), Swedish (Müller 2019) or…”