• Slides from Class (.Robert's pdf file) (Philip's .pdf file)

1. exceptional status (Ross 1967, pp. 15-18)
2. parameterization of subjacency as a red herring, part 1 (Rizzi/Engdahl/Grimshaw)
3. distance effects (Frazier and Clifton, Alexopolou and Keller, Sprouse)
4. intervention effects (Kluender/Gibson)
5. referentiality (Kluender/Hofmeister)
6. lexical frequency/semantics (Kluender)
7. finiteness (Ross)

Engdahl, E. 1980: The purported violations of subjacency all involve relativization, topicalization, and D-linked wh-questions out of (a) wh-islands and (b) sentential complement complex NPs. Engdahl notes that extraction out of relative clauses works only when the head noun is indefinite, when the extracted NP is "relevant" (see Kuno and Erteschik Shir proposals), and based on (unspecified) `semantic-pragmatic properties of the main verb.' (p. 106, fn. 4).

Rizzi, L. 1982: The first attempt at the notion of parameterization: S vs. S' as purported bounding node crosslinguistically.

Grimshaw, J. 1986: An important reply to Rizzi.

Kluender, R. 1998: The important thing here is how the acceptability data of complementizer and specifier differences-in terms of lexical semantic content (over and above frequency: if and who/what are equivalent in frequency) - at the clause boundary align with the ERP data.

Reading:

• Engdahl, E. 1980. Wh-constructions in Swedish and the relevance of subjacency. In J. T. Jensen (ed.), Cahiers Linguisticques D'Ottawa: Proceedings of the Tenth Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, 89-108. Ottawa, ONT: University of Ottawa Department of Linguistics. (.pdf)
• Grimshaw, J. 1986. Subjacency and the S/S' Parameter. Linguistic Inquiry 17 (2): 364-369. (.pdf)
• Kluender, R. 1998. On the distinction between strong and weak islands: A processing perspective. In P.W. Culicover and L. McNally (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 29: The Limits of Syntax. Pp. 241-279. New York, NY: Academic Press. (.pdf)
• Hofmeister, Philip. 2007. Memory Retrieval Effects on Filler-Gap Processing. Paper to be presented at the Annual Meetings of the Cognitive Science Society. (.pdf)

Further Reading:

• Rizzi, L. 1982. Violations of the wh-island constraint and the subjacency condition. In L. Rizzi (ed.), Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht, NL: Foris.

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Last Updated: June 28, 2007