Two (non-) islands in Slovenian

ǂa ǂstudy in experimental syntax

Arthur Stepanov (Avtor), Manca Mušič (Avtor), Penka Stateva (Avtor)

Povzetek

There exists a controversy in the literature and among the speakers of Slovenian concerning the grammaticality of wh-island and subject island constructions in this language. We conducted an acceptability rating study of wh-islands and subject islands in Slovenian, using the factorial definition of island. This definition provides for a possibility to isolate a true island effect while controlling for two complexity factors that potentially interfere in speakers’ evaluation of the relevant sentences: the length of the respective movement dependency and the presence of an island structure itself. We found that (i) Slovenian speakers do judge the wh-island sentences worse than the respective controls, but the observed degradation cannot be attributed to a true island effect; (ii) subject extraction out of a wh-island leads to a so called reverse island effect whereby the acceptability is higher than expected even if the above two complexity factors are taken into consideration; and (iii) speakers are sensitive to the subject island effect, as predicted by the mainstream theories of syntactic locality. The results of our study contribute to establishing a solid empirical base for further theoretical investigations of the island effects and raise new questions about the role of processing factors in speakers’ evaluations of island constructions.

Ključne besede

syntactic island;experimental syntax;subjacency;Empty Category Principle;Slovenian;

Podatki

Jezik:	Angleški jezik
Leto izida:	2018
Tipologija:	1.01 - Izvirni znanstveni članek
Organizacija:	UNG - Univerza v Novi Gorici
UDK:	81'36
COBISS:	5165819
ISSN:	0024-3949
Št. ogledov:	3521
Št. prenosov:	0
Ocena:	0 (0 glasov)
Metapodatki:

Ostali podatki

URN:	URN:SI:UNG
Vrsta dela (COBISS):	Delo ni kategorizirano
Strani:	str. 435-476
Letnik:	ǂVol. ǂ56
Zvezek:	ǂno. ǂ3
Čas izdaje:	2018
DOI:	10.1515/ling-2018-0002
ID:	10940539