Subclausal locality constraints on relative clause extraposition
We argue, using corpus evidence from English and German, that extraposition does not obey subclausal locality constraints such as Subjacency (Chomsky 1973) and related proposals if these constraints are taken to be categorical constraints. We also present results from two experiments on locality and extraposition in English and German that are partly unexpected for these theoretical accounts of subclausal locality. However, we also demonstrate a robust but gradient effect of locality in a corpus study on German and a significant effect of subclausal locality on extraposition in another acceptability experiment. We conclude that locality constraints on extraposition are gradient and that syntactic locality should be seen in the context of processing factors such as dependency locality (Gibson 2000) and linear distance.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Francis, Elaine J.
2021.
Gradient Acceptability and Linguistic Theory,
Francom, Jerid
2021.
Corpus Studies of Syntax. In
The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax,
► pp. 687 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.