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Title:Two (non-)islands in Slovenian : A study in experimental syntax
Authors:ID Stepanov, Arthur, University of Nova Gorica (Author)
ID Mušič, Manca, University of Nova Gorica (Author)
ID Stateva, Penka, University of Nova Gorica (Author)
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Language:English
Work type:Not categorized
Typology:1.01 - Original Scientific Article
Organization:UNG - University of Nova Gorica
Abstract: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.
Keywords:syntactic island, experimental syntax, Subjacency, Empty Category Principle, Slovenian
Publication version:Preprint, working version of publication, not peer-reviewed
Year of publishing:2018
Number of pages:435-476
Numbering:2018, 56/3
PID:20.500.12556/RUNG-3962-ffc0205b-9dda-75c1-72d2-602bc05b82f0 New window
COBISS.SI-ID:5165819 New window
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2018-0002 New window
NUK URN:URN:SI:UNG:REP:N6LDREJP
Publication date in RUNG:11.06.2018
Views:5170
Downloads:0
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Record is a part of a journal

Title:Linguistics
Publisher:De Gruyter
Year of publishing:2018
ISSN:0024-3949

Document is financed by a project

Funder:EC - European Commission
Funding programme:FP7
Project number:613465
Name:Advancing the European Multilingual Experience
Acronym:ATHEME

Licences

License:CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Link:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Description:The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.
Licensing start date:11.06.2018

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