A Phrase Structure Account of Scandinavian Extraction Phenomena

Maling, Joan; Zaenen, Annie

doi:10.1007/978-94-009-7707-5_7

Cited by 59 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…1 The contrast has also been discussed for weak islands as (3a), claimed to be more acceptable than (3b) (as observed by Maling andZaenen 1982, cited in Hofmeister andSag 2010). (3) a.…”

Section: (2)mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…tions (Maling and Zaenen 1982;Hofmeister and Sag 2010;Frazier and Clifton 2002) and also to interact with intrusive resumption (Frazier and Clifton 2002 Table 5: Result of Tukey test for the main effect of wh-phrase in Experiment 2 (whether -clauses) (22) whether-clause a. Bare what: What does Jean wonder whether they will watch it/Øat the cinema? b.…”

Section: Experiments 2: D-linking and Resumption In Whether -Islands Imentioning

confidence: 99%

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What vs. who and which: Kind-denoting fillers and the complexity of whether-islands

Alexopoulou¹,

Keller²

2013

Experimental Syntax and Island Effects

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We present results from three acceptability judgement experiments investigating the effect of discourse linking (d-linking) and animacy on whether-islands and interactions with resumption in Greek and English. Based on Anagnostopoulou's referentiality hierarchy, we test the acceptability of four types of wh-phrases, what, what X, which X, which of X in a range of configurations (simple questions and questions involving extractions out of (non-island) that-clauses and whether-islands). We further test interactions between animacy and d-linking in English. Our results show that d-linking improves whether-islands in both Greek and English. However, d-linking does not alter the overall interactions: whether-islands remain mostly less acceptable than that-clauses. While acceptability increases overall as predicted by the referentiality hypothesis, we obtain two unexpected contrasts: (i) a contrast between which X and what phrases and (ii) an independent effect of animacy; who is better than what, on a par with which X phrases. These contrasts affect the acceptability of whether-islands but not that-clauses.We propose that what sets what phrases apart, is the contrast between kind-denoting (what) and ordinary individuals (which,who), which can be triggered by d-linking or animacy. This denotational hypothesis predicts that the distinction is only relevant for scopal islands like whether-islands. The denotational contrast affects the processing complexity of whether-islands. Kind-denoting wh-fillers have higher integration costs (in the sense of Gibson's complexity model). The denotation of the filler interacts with its complexity (e.g. who vs. which X); together, they may improve the acceptability of whether-islands; however, they cannot cancel their overall complexity, as they cannot cancel * We would like to thank John Hawkins, Philip Hofmeister, Napoleon Katsos and the editors of this volume for comments and suggestions.The first author acknowledges support by Education First.John Sprouse and Norbert Hornstein, eds., Experimental Syntax and Island Effects, 310-340. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. the main scope island (i.e. the question intercepting the filler-gap dependency); thus, manipulations of the filler cannot restore the acceptability of whether-islands. Finally, a crucial overall conclusion is that alleviation of integration costs of the filler (through d-liking/animacy) has a stronger effect on improving whether-islands compared to cancellation of locality costs (through resumption).

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“…1 The contrast has also been discussed for weak islands as (3a), claimed to be more acceptable than (3b) (as observed by Maling andZaenen 1982, cited in Hofmeister andSag 2010). (3) a.…”

Section: (2)mentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Experiments 2: D-linking and Resumption In Whether -Islands Imentioning

confidence: 99%

What vs. who and which: Kind-denoting fillers and the complexity of whether-islands

Alexopoulou¹,

Keller²

2013

Experimental Syntax and Island Effects

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“…Unbounded dependencies in the Scandinavian languages provide a clear illustration of this case. Maling & Zaenen (1982) argue that constructions containing resumptive pronouns and those containing gaps form a unified phenomenon, as the dislocated fillers in both constructions maintain the same tight syntactic bond with their associated extraction site. The Swedish example in (13) illustrates the use of resumptive pronouns to avoid violating an island constraint (here whatever condition bars extraction over the complementizer om).…”

Section: Resumptive Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Derived constituent order in unbounded dependency constructions

Blevins

1994

J. Ling.

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This paper proposes that unbounded dependency constructions in English instantiate a surface subject-predicate structure in which the predicate is typically discontinuous. Evidence is presented supporting this discontinuous analysis over the operatorvariable structure conventionally assigned to unbounded dependencies. A model of phrase structure that sanctions discontinuous representations is outlined, along with a feature-based strategy for generating the proposed structures within an extended phrase structure system. Extraction islands and other locality constraints are subsequently characterized with reference to the feature propagation paths that induce discontinuity.

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“…Previous suggestions for constraining phrase structure accounts of UDCs have not captured these specialized properties of A-position filler UDCs; for example, in earlier versions of GPSG, the 'double hole constraint' accounted neatly for the lack of multiple wh-extractions but fails in cases like (101) and (88) (see Maling and Zaenan (1982) for a discussion of this difficulty). In current extensions of GPSG, where SLASH is often said to be stack-valued or even set-valued, the difficulty is that in English, only missing/optional object UDCs can load more than a single value into the stack.…”

Section: Consequences Of the Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

On the disunity of unbounded dependency constructions

Hukari

Levine

1991

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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Since Noam Chomsky's 1977 paper 'On wh-movement', syntactic theorists almost universally have assumed that tough~too~enough constructions are to be treated by the same formal mechanism as wh-extraction constructions, in spite of well-known syntactic divergences between the two types. We argue that these divergences reflect a real dichotomy between unbounded dependencies with fillers in A(rgument) positions, e.g. tough constructions, and those whose fillers occupy non-argument (Abar) positions, e.g. topicalization. We first show that strong external evidence exists supporting the GPSG-internal prediction of full syntactic connectivity between Aposition fillers and their gap sites, but that this result seems contradicted by the existence of case conflict between the filler and gap. To overcome this contradiction, we introduce a new gap-licensing feature GAP, and show how a number of other divergences between A-and A-bar filler/gap constructions follow as a consequence. INTRODUCTION 1The publication in 1977 of Chomsky's paper 'On wh-movement' marks the beginning of an era of remarkable consensus in linguistic theory, not only among transformational grammarians but throughout the emerging community of theorists committed to generative models of grammar in which transformations or equivalent processes play no role. Chomsky's claim that all unbounded dependency constructions (UDCs) behave uniformly with respect to certain logically independent syntactic criteria and therefore, by Ockham's razor, should be treated as a single species was central to the emergence of the Binding Theory of current transforma-*

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A Phrase Structure Account of Scandinavian Extraction Phenomena

Cited by 59 publications

References 4 publications

What vs. who and which: Kind-denoting fillers and the complexity of whether-islands

What vs. who and which: Kind-denoting fillers and the complexity of whether-islands

Derived constituent order in unbounded dependency constructions

On the disunity of unbounded dependency constructions

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