Ángel J. Gallego
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 152] 2010
► pp. 253–334
This chapter discusses and reviews the notion of island in the context of the framework of phases, delving into Chomsky’s (2008) claim that the specifiers of phase heads v* and C (the so-called edges) impose locality restrictions that give rise to island effects –by and large, of the type Huang (1982) explored. After reviewing different cross linguistic evidence, I conclude, following Boeckx (2003a), that the Subject Condition obtains from the interaction between the Case/agreement systems (Chomsky’s 2000; 2001 Activity Condition) and the mechanics of subextraction processes, a conclusion I extend to both objects and adjuncts. The final part of the chapter is dedicated to the second scenario of what could be called edge-induced islands, which is referred to as Criterial Freezing by Rizzi (2006). I review the data related to this extraction instance, originally reported by Torrego (1985), providing an analysis that denies the role played by both edges and Rizzi’s (2006) interpretation of freezing.