Islands

L322

 

Islands are constituents out of which embedded constitutes cannot move. We will cover only CP islands here. If the CP is the complement of a NP, nothing can be extracted out of it:

  1. *What did Mary make the claim [ that John sold [trace] ]?
  2. *Who Marie is pondering [ the fact that the revolutionaries killed [trace] ]?

If the WH-phrase is not extracted, the related structures fail where the WH-phrase does not have an echo reading:

  1. Mary made the claim [ that John sold what]?
  2. Marie is pondering the fact [ that the revolutionaries killed who ]?

The vast majority of NPs do not subcategorize [+WH].Hence, the movement of the WH-phrase to the embedded CP crashes:

  1. *Mary made the claim [ what John sold [trace] ].
  2. *Marie is pondering the fact [ who the revolutionaries killed [trace] ].

There are a few nouns that take a WH-complement. The WH-phrase moves and is adjoined to CP:

  1. The question of [ what John is to major in [trace] ] is still unresolved.

We have a case of a D-structure which has no grammatical derivation. If one wants to find out the identity of such an embedded object, he must resort to the following type of discourse connection:

  1. I heard that Mary made the claim that John sold something. What did John sell?

Extraction is not possible out of a CP complement of an adjective:

  1. *What is John happy [ that he got [trace ] ]?
  2. *Where is Mary sure [ that her daughter went [trace] ]?

There are certain verbs that take complements out of which extraction is not possible or varies amongst speakers of English:

  1. Melissa murmured that she had a severe headache.
  2. ?*What did Melissa murmur that she had?
  3. Henry whispered to Edna that Jake has the measles.
  4. ?*What did Henry whisper to Edna that Jake has?
  5. Morgan growled that Joe took his syntax book.
  6. *What did Morgan growl that Joe took?

The fact that some verbs resist extraction of WH-phrases from their CP complements suggests that there is a general (universal) constraint against extraction from CP. Some languages permit no extraction at all. It seems reasonable to propose that some verbs in certain languages permit bridges. These bridges cross over the barrier of CP permitting extraction. Bridges cannot be built over barriers of NP and AP complements. This is interesting in that nouns and adjectives must be Case marked and cannot assign Case structurally (see ). Is there a relationship between Case and bridges? We leave this question for future pondering.

 

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