Evaluating meaning-based explanations of syntactic island effects cross-linguistically

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A core problem in understanding constraints on syntax in human languages is understanding constraints on long-distance dependencies, such as in “Which sportscar did the color of __ delight the baseball player?” The long-distance dependency between the wh-phrase (a question word or phrase beginning with “wh”) “which sportscar” and its interpretation position following “color of” is not acceptable in English. This kind of observation led Chomsky to propose that constraints on long-distance dependencies may be innate and unlearnable: part of Universal Grammar. An alternative approach proposes that the difficulty of a long-distance dependency depends on the discourse status of the extracted element in the construction at hand: the extracted element is a focus (corresponding to new information) in wh-questions, but not in relative clauses. The current project investigates predictions of the two kinds of accounts. The results will inform theories about the form of extraction constraints in English and French, and human language more generally. This project will provide interdisciplinary training to a postdoctoral student and to undergraduate students, including under-represented minorities. This research will build connections between the fields of experimental psychology, cognitive science and linguistics.The research to be conducted here consists of behavioral acceptability experiments in English and French, in cases of extraction out of subjects, and in extraction out of adjuncts, which have also been claimed to be difficult to extract from in the syntactic literature. For example, according to a discourse-based theory, extractions from subjects will improve even in wh-questions if the extraction position can be marked as a focus, e.g., with contrastive focus markers like “even” and “only”, as in “Which sportscar did even the color of __ delight the baseball player?”This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.