Frequency effects in Subject Islands

• Published in: Journal of linguistics Vol. 55; no. 3; pp. 475 - 521
• Main Authors: CHAVES, RUI P., DERY, JERUEN E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.08.2019
• Subjects: Allusion; Architecture; Experiments; Frequency of occurrence; Grammatical subject; Linguistics; Literary devices; Repetition; Syntactic islands; Syntax; Violations; Websites; experimental syntax; parasitism; filler–gap dependencies
• ISSN: 0022-2267; 1469-7742
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022226718000294

This work provides evidence that Subject Island violation effects vanish if subject-embedded gaps are made as frequent and pragmatically felicitous as non-island counterpart controls. We argue that Subject Island effects are caused by the fact that subject-embedded gaps are pragmatically unusual – as the informational focus does not usually correspond to a dependant of the subject phrase – and therefore are highly contrary to comprehenders’ expectations about the distribution of filler–gap dependencies (Chaves 2013, Hofmeister, Casasanto & Sag 2013). This not only explains why sentences with subject-embedded gaps often become more acceptable ‘parasitically’, in the presence of a second gap outside the island, but also explains why some Subject Island violations fail to exhibit any amelioration with repetition (Sprouse 2009, Crawford 2011, Goodall 2011); some ameliorate marginally (Snyder 2000, 2017) or moderately (Hiramatsu 2000, Clausen 2011, Chaves & Dery 2014), and others become fully acceptable, as in our case. This conclusion extends to self-paced reading Subject Island studies (Stowe 1986, Kurtzman & Crawford 1991, Pickering, Barton & Shillcock 1994, Phillips 2006), which sometimes find evidence of gap filling and sometimes do not.