Island Constraints: An Introduction

We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study that investigated late German–English bilinguals’ sensitivity to parasitic gaps inside subject islands. The online reading experiment was complemented by an offline scalar judgement task. The results from the offline task confirmed that for both native and non-native speakers, subject island environments must normally be non-finite in order to host a parasitic gap. The analysis of the reading-time data showed that, while native speakers posited parasitic gaps in non-finite environments only, the non-native group initially overgenerated parasitic gaps, showing delayed sensitivity to island-inducing cues during online processing. Taken together, our findings show that non-native comprehenders are sensitive to exceptions to island constraints that are not attested in their native language and also rare in the L2 input. They need more time than native comprehenders to compute the linguistic representations over which the relevant restrictions are defined, however.

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The influence of first language on the processing of wh-movement in English as a second language

Second language Research ◽

10.1191/0267658305sr255oa ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 121-151 ◽

Cited By ~ 78

Author(s):

Alan Juffs

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Word Reading ◽

Native Speakers ◽

First Language ◽

Long Distance ◽

Nonnative Speaker ◽

Garden Path ◽

Reading Technique ◽

Island Constraints ◽

Nonfinite Clauses

Adult learners of English as a second language who speak Chinese ( n = 30), Japanese ( n = 28) or Spanish ( n = 46) as a first language (L1), and a comparison group of native speakers ( n = 22) read sentences that contain: (a) ungrammatical wh-extractions that violate island constraints; and (b) grammatical long-distance Subject and Object extractions from finite and nonfinite clauses. Word-by-word reading times for each sentence were collected using the self-paced reading technique. Results suggest that the presence or absence of wh-movement in the L1 and the headedness of the verb phrase in the L1 are unable to explain all of the variation between the nonnative speaker groups. Severe garden path effects were observed in Subject extractions from finite clauses, but not in extractions from nonfinite clauses, suggesting that two finite verbs next to one another may be an important factor in causing parsing break-down. Individual variation in reading time was not predictable from measures of reading span or word span in either the first or second language.

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Wh-movement and unbounded deletion in Polish equatives

Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s0022226700007003 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 271-288 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Robert D. Borsley

Keyword(s):

Direct Evidence ◽

Island Constraints ◽

Important Evidence

Chomsky (1977) argues that all constructions that apparently involve unbounded deletion rules obeying island constraints in fact involve successive cyclic wh-movement followed by deletion in COMP. Among the relevant constructions are English equatives. There is no direct evidence that they involve wh-movement. Polish equatives, however, often show quite clear evidence of the operation of wh-movement. It might be thought, then, that they provide some evidence for Chomsky's position. In this paper, I will argue that this is not in fact the case. I will argue that Polish equatives often involve not only wh-movement but deletion in S as well. I will then argue that they sometimes involve just deletion. Finally, I will argue that this deletion is unbounded and subject to island constraints. Clearly, if this is correct, Polish equatives, far from providing support for Chomsky' position, in fact provide important evidence against it.

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