Experimental Syntax and Island Effects

Cambridge University Press, 10/17/2013
EAN 9781107008700, ISBN10: 1107008700

Hardcover, 432 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English

This volume brings together cutting-edge experimental research from leaders in the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics to explore the nature of a phenomenon that has long been central to syntactic theory - 'island effects'. The chapters in this volume draw upon recent methodological advances in experimental methods in syntax, also known as 'experimental syntax', to investigate the underlying cognitive mechanisms that give rise to island effects. This volume presents a comprehensive empirical review of a contemporary debate in the field by including contributions from researchers representing a variety of points of view on the nature of island effects. This book is ideal for students and researchers interested in cutting-edge experimental techniques in linguistics, psycholinguistics and psychology.

1. Experimental syntax and island effects
toward a comprehensive theory of islands Jon Sprouse and Norbert Hornstein
Part I. Global Issues in the Investigation of Island Effects
2. Deriving competing predictions from grammatical approaches and reductionist approaches to island effects Jon Sprouse, Matthew W. Wagers and Colin Phillips
3. Islands in the grammar? Standards of evidence Philip Hofmeister, Laura Staum Casasanto and Ivan A. Sag
4. On the nature of island constraints. I
Language processing and reductionist accounts Colin Phillips
5. Computational models of acquisition for islands Lisa Pearl and Jon Sprouse
6. On the nature of island constraints. II
Language learning and innateness Colin Phillips
Part II. Specific Issues in the Investigation of Island Effects
7. Memory mechanisms for wh-dependency formation and their implications for islandhood Matthew W. Wagers
8. What's negative about negative islands? A re-evaluation of extraction from weak island contexts Robert Kluender and Simone Gieselman
9. On the structural nature of island constraints Brian Dillon and Norbert Hornstein
10. Backgrounded constituents cannot be 'extracted' Adele E. Goldberg
11. Microvariation in islands Dave Kush, Akira Omaki and Norbert Hornstein
12. Subject islands in German revisited Johannes Jurka
13. Subject islands are different Maria Polinsky, Carlos G. Gallo, Peter Graff, Ekaterina Kravtchenko, Adam Milton Morgan and Anne Sturgeon
14. What vs. who and which
kind-denoting fillers and the complexity of whether-islands Theodora Alexopoulou and Frank Keller
15. Resumption in English Maria Polinsky, Lauren Eby Clemens, Adam Milton Morgan, Ming Xiang and Dustin Heestand
16. The island (in)sensitivity of sluicing and sprouting Masaya Yoshida, Jiyeon Lee and Michael Walsh Dickey.

'This important collection of papers demonstrates the utility of experimental syntax by elucidating the debate about the nature and source of syntactic island effects concerning the interaction of the grammar and the processor, thereby providing an excellent introduction to a new avenue for syntactic research.' Robert Freidin, Princeton University