Too True to Be Good? The Non-Uniformity of Extraction from Adjunct Clauses in English

Abstract

Adjunct clauses are traditionally assumed to be strong islands for extraction across languages. However, the universal island status of adjunct clauses has been challenged by studies showing that extraction is possible from finite adjunct clauses in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. The possibility of extraction in these languages appears to be affected by various factors, including the type of adjunct clause, the type of extraction dependency, and the presence of contextual facilitation. These findings call for a re-evaluation of the islandhood of adjunct clauses in English. We conducted an acceptability judgment study on relativization from three types of finite adjunct clauses in English (if-, when-, and because-clauses) in the presence of supporting context. We found that the three clause types showed rather non-uniform acceptability patterns: extraction from when- and because-clauses both yielded significantly lower ratings than extraction from if-clauses, which patterned with non-island that-clauses. Our results suggest that at least for relativization, if- and when-adjuncts are not invariably strong islands in English, and that extra-grammatical factors may be key in understanding island structures traditionally assumed to be purely syntactic in nature.

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.…”

“…Two recent studies have investigated demonstrative rc-dependencies (dem rcs) 5 into finite adjunct clauses. 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.…”

“…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.…”

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Recent experiments have confirmed earlier informal evidence that finite adjuncts are not islands categorically. Specifically, it has been shown that adjuncts are not necessarily islands for all dependency types (Sprouse et al 2016), and that the island status of an adjunct depends on the type of the adjunct clause in question (Kush et al 2019;Müller 2019;Bondevik et al 2021;Nyvad et al 2022). The current study further explores these questions by testing three different adjunct clause types: Clauses introduced by om 'if', fordi 'because' and når 'when', in a relative clause (rc) dependency in Norwegian.

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“…Chinese (Zenker & Schwartz 2017). Furthermore, several studies have found that acceptability of adjunct island violations depends on the type of adjunct clause from which extraction takes place (Müller 2019;Chaves & Putnam 2020;Bondevik et al 2021;Nyvad et al 2022).…”