Processing Relative Clause Extractions in Swedish

Abstract

Relative clauses are considered strong islands for extraction across languages. Swedish comprises a well-known exception, allegedly allowing extraction from relative clauses (RCE), raising the possibility that island constraints may be subject to “deep variation” between languages. One alternative is that such exceptions are only illusory and represent “surface variation” attributable to independently motivated syntactic properties. Yet, to date, no surface account has proven tenable for Swedish RCEs. The present study uses eyetracking while reading to test whether the apparent acceptability of Swedish RCEs has any processing correlates at the point of filler integration compared to uncontroversial strong island violations. Experiment 1 tests RCE against licit that-clause extraction (TCE), illicit extraction from a non-restrictive relative clause (NRCE), and an intransitive control. For this, RCE was found to pattern similarly to TCE at the point of integration in early measures, but between TCE and NRCE in total durations. Experiment 2 uses RCE and extraction from a subject NP island (SRCE) to test the hypothesis that only non-islands will show effects of implausible filler-verb dependencies. RCE showed sensitivity to the plausibility manipulation across measures at the first potential point of filler integration, whereas such effects were limited to late measures for SRCE. In addition, structural facilitation was seen across measures for RCE relative to SRCE. We propose that our results are compatible with RCEs being licit weak island extractions in Swedish, and that the overall picture speaks in favor of a surface rather than a deep variation approach to the lack of island effects in Swedish RCEs.

The Island Is Still There: Experimental Evidence For The Inescapability Of Relative Clauses In English*

“…According to the surface variation approach, seemingly acceptable violations of island constraints are only apparent exceptions: Island constraints are universal and inviolable, and exceptions reflect different underlying syntactic representations that only look similar on the surface (see for example Kush & Lindahl 2011, Kush et al 2013, Sichel 2018). Tutunjian et al (2017) found that extraction from RCs in Swedish was processed in a different way than strong islands and suggest that this correlates with their apparent acceptability in this language. Tutunjian et al interpret their results as being compatible with a surface (not deep) variation approach, as they view extraction from RCs as constituting a weak island, but an island nonetheless.…”

“…Tutunjian et al. (2017) found that extraction from RCs in Swedish was processed in a different way than strong islands and suggest that this correlates with their apparent acceptability in this language. Tutunjian et al.…”

“…They do not explain why this variation exists, apart from mentioning that the gradience must be due to “the (intervening) features/structures that create the island” (Tutunjian et al. 2017:18), and they highlight finiteness as an ostensibly crucial factor. However, we would argue, in order for “features/structures” to affect acceptability, extraction from RCs must underlyingly be licit in the first place.…”

“…a girl or authors ) because it has been shown that definiteness reduces the acceptability of RC extraction (Engdahl 1982b; see also Hofmeister & Sag 2010). This may be related to the observation that non‐restrictive (parenthetical) relative clauses are stronger islands than restrictive ones (Platzack 2000, Tutunjian, Heinat, Klingvall & Wiklund 2017, but see Wiklund et al. 2017).…”

No escape from the island: On extraction from complement wh-clauses in English

“…(4) b. Danish: Diffi cult to process The option of cP-recursion may not be available in relation to all types of island constructions (adjunct islands, relative clauses, complex NPs, subject islands, whether-islands, etc. ), as there appears to be some variation in the acceptability of extractions from these domains within and across the Mainland Scandinavian languages (Kush, Lohndal & Sprouse 2018;Kush, Lohndal & Sprouse 2019;Tutunjian et al 2017). 2 Interestingly, however, 2 As explained in the introduction, the option in Danish of a recursive functional cP-layer ('little' cP) that provides an extra specifi er position as an escape hatch is available only in subordinate clause types.…”