Experimental syntax and the variation of island effects in English and Italian

Abstract

Experimental syntax and the variation of island effects in English and Italian AcknowledgmentsThis work was supported in part by National Science Foundation grants BCS-0843896 and BSC-1347115 to JS. We would like to thank Michela Marchesi for assistance collecting data for the Italian WH-dependencies experiment. We would like to thank Jeremy Hartman, Norbert Hornstein, Luigi Rizzi, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article. We would also like to thank audiences at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Illinois Chicago for helpful comments at various stages of the development of this study. All errors remain our own.1 Experimental syntax and the variation of island effects in English and Italian AbstractThe goal of this article is to explore the utility of experimental syntax techniques in the investigation of syntactic variation. To that end, we applied the factorial definition of island effects made available by experimental syntax (e.g., ) to four island types (wh/whether, complex NP, subject, and adjunct), two dependency types (wh-interrogative clause dependencies and relative clause dependencies) and two languages (English and Italian). The results of 8 primary experiments suggest that there is indeed variation across dependency types, suggesting that wh-interrogative clause dependencies and relative clause dependencies cannot be identical at every level of analysis; however, the pattern of variation observed in these experiments is not exactly the pattern of variation previously reported in the literature (e.g., Rizzi 1982). We review six major syntactic approaches to the analysis island effects (Subjacency, CED, Barriers, Relativized Minimality, Structure-building, and Phases) and discuss the implications of these results for these analyses. We also present 4 supplemental experiments testing complex wh-phrases (also called D-linked or lexically restricted wh-phrases) for all four island types using the factorial design in order to tease apart the contribution of dependency type from featural specification. The results of the supplemental experiments confirm that dependency type is the major source of variation, not featural specification, while providing a concrete quantification of what exactly the effect of complex wh-phrases on island effects is.

Intervention effects and Relativized Minimality: New experimental evidence from graded judgments

“…Lingua xxx (2016) xxx--xxx give rise to severe ill-formedness not modulated by the nature of the extractee (but see Sprouse et al, 2016, for a more complex picture based on a quantitative definition of island effects made possible by formal experimental methods). Unlike strong islands, the deviance of the extraction from a weak island is modulated by the nature of the extracted wh-element (see Szabolcsi, 2006, for an overview).…”

“…The conditions without intervention allowed us to control for any effect of lexical restriction independent of intervention. Note that sentences with intervention involve two other sources of variability that the No extraction conditions did not control for (see Sprouse et al, 2016). One is the presence of a longdistance dependency: Intervention conditions contain a long-distance dependency that No Intervention conditions do not.…”

Deconstructing the Subject Condition in terms of cumulative constraint violation

“…A second point to note is that if constraints like the Freezing Constraint vary in strength from one language to another, it is less likely that they can be reduced to domaingeneral cognitive mechanisms re lating to problems in processing nested dependencies, since these mechanisms are unlikely to vary across speakers of different languages. From this perspective, it would seem as if there may be a residue of syntactic islandhood which cannot easily be accounted for in purely processing terms (See also Sprouse et al 2013).…”

“…In addition, it is unclear whether clausal subjects are CPs, or (as proposed by Takahashi 2009) DPs. 2 For a range of empirical, theoretical and experimental perspectives on CED, see Nunes and Uriagereka (2000); Sabel (2002); Rackowski and Richards (2005); Stepanov (2007); Chomsky (2008); Müller (2010); Jurka (2010); Jurka et al (2011);Sheehan (2010Sheehan ( , 2012; Sprouse et al (2013). CED is potentially problematic because there are languages which allow extraction out of sub jects (Stepanov 2001(Stepanov , 2007, or out of certain types of adjunct (Starke 2001: 40, fn.10; Brought to you by | Periodicals Section, Albert Sloman Libr.…”

Les relatives endontdu français : études empiriques

“…Il existe une littérature fournie consacrée aux extractions hors de syntagme nominal (SN) sujet (Deane 1991, Sabel 2002, Chaves 2013 qui semble problématique dans certaines langues, comme l'anglais 2 . Il existe plusieurs études empiriques sur l'anglais et sur d'autres langues (Polinsky et al 2013, Sprouse et al 2015, mais nous n'avons pas connaissance d'études similaires réalisées sur le français. Notre deuxième objectif sera par conséquent de contraster les cas où dont correspond au complément d'un nom sujet et ceux où il correspond au complément d'un nom objet.…”