Cover not available
Part of
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXX: Papers from the annual symposia on Arabic Linguistics, Stony Brook, New York, 2016 and Norman, Oklahoma, 2017
Edited by Amel Khalfaoui and Matthew A. Tucker
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 7] 2019
► pp. 159–194

Resumption ameliorates different islands differentially

Acceptability data from Modern Standard Arabic

| Oakland University
| Qatar University
| University of Connecticut
| NYU Abu Dhabi
Two acceptability experiments are presented which assess whether resumptive pronouns freely alternate with gaps and/or ameliorate island violation effects in wh-questions in Modern Standard Arabic. Both experiments test Complex Noun Phrase Constraint violations, adjunct island violations, and whether island violations. The results indicate that resumption is largely only acceptable with structurally complex DP fillers (which-NP) and is generally preferred to gapped structures in long-distance dependencies. Resumption is also shown to ameliorate the grammatical component of some island violations (adjunct and whether islands), but in different quantitative amounts across different islands. The overall picture which emerges is one in which resumption is quantitatively, but perhaps not qualitatively, helpful in repairing grammatical constraint violations in Modern Standard Arabic.
Keywords: syntax, resumptive pronouns, acceptability judgements, islands
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The grammatical status of resumption
    • 1.2Resumption and Island amelioration
    • 1.3The present study
      • 1.3.1Methodology
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials & design
    • 2.3Procedure
    • 2.4Analysis & predictions
    • 2.5Results
      • 2.5.1 whether islands
      • 2.5.2Adjunct islands
      • 2.5.3CNPC violations
    • 2.6Discussion
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials & design
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Analysis & predictions
    • 3.5Results
      • 3.5.1 whether islands
      • 3.5.2Adjunct islands
      • 3.5.3CNPC violations
    • 3.6Discussion
  • 4.General discussion
    • 4.1Differences within differences
    • 4.2Islands in MSA
    • 4.3The grammaticality of resumption and gapping
    • 4.4Amelioration in islands
    • 4.5Conclusions
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.7.09tuc
References (57)
References
Ackerman, L., Frazier, M., & Yoshida, M. 2015. Resumptive pronouns can ameliorate illicit island extractions. (Ms., Northwestern University).Google Scholar
Alexopoulou, T., & Keller, F. 2007. Locality, cyclicity, and resumption: At the interface between the grammar and the human sentence processor. Language, 83(1).Google Scholar
Almeida, D. 2014. Subliminal wh-islands in Brazilian Portuguese and the consequences for syntactic theory. Revista de ABRALIN 13(2), 55–93.Google Scholar
Alotaibi, M., & Borsley, R. D. 2013. Gaps and resumptive pronouns in Modern Standard Arabic. In S. Müller (Ed.), Proceedings of the 20th international conference on head-driven phrase structure grammar (pp.6–23). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Aoun, J. 1981. The formal nature of anaphoric relations (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Aoun, J., Benmamoun, E., & Choueiri, L. 2010. The syntax of Arabic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Aoun, J., & Choueiri, L. 2000. Epithets. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18(1), 1–39.Google Scholar
Aoun, J., Choueiri, L., & Hornstein, N. 2001. Resumption, movement, and derivational economy. Linguistic Inquiry 32(3), 371–403. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Asudeh, A. 2004. Resumption as resource management (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.Google Scholar
2011. Local grammaticality in syntactic production. In E. Bender & J. Arnold (Eds.), Language from a cognitive perspective: Grammar, usage, and processing: Studies in honor of Thomas Wasow. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
2012. The logic of pronominal resumption. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. 2013. Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68(3), 255–278. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, D. M., Kliegl, R., Vasishth, S., & Baayen, R. H. 2015, June. Parsimonious mixed models. (Ms., arXiv).Google Scholar
Beltrama, A., & Xiang, M. 2017. Ungrammatical but comprehensible: The facilitation effect of resumptive pronouns. Glossa 1(1).Google Scholar
Bennett, R. 2008. English resumptive pronouns and the highest subject restriction. (Handout of a talk given at the Trilateral Linguistics Weekend (TREND), University of California, Santa Cruz, 11 May 2008).Google Scholar
Borer, H. 1984. Restrictive relatives in modern hebrew. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 2(2), 219–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chao, W., & Sells, P. 1983. On the interpretation of resumptive pronouns. In Proceedings of nels (Vol. 13, pp.47–61).Google Scholar
Cinque, G. 1990. Types of A′-dependencies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clemens, L., Scontras, G., & Polinsky, M. 2012. English does not have resumptive pronouns: A cross-sentential account of English resumption. (Talk presented at the 87th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America).Google Scholar
Dermidache, H. K. 1991. Resumptive chains in restrictive relatives, appositives, and dislocation structures (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Erteschik-Shir, N. 1992. Resumptive pronouns in islands. In H. Goodluck & M. Rochemont (Eds.), Island constriants: Theory, acquisition, and processing (pp.89–108). Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farby, S., Danon, G., Walters, J., & Ben-Shachar, M. 2010. The acceptability of resumptive pronouns in Hebrew. In Y. N. Falk (Ed.), Proceedings of IATL 26. Israeli Association for Theoretical Linguistics.Google Scholar
Ferreira, F., & Swets, B. 2005. The production and comprehension of resumptive pronouns in relative clause island contexts. In A. Cutler (Ed.), Twenty-first century psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones (pp.101–122). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Fox, D. 1999. Relative clauses and resumptive pronouns in Hebrew: An optimality theoretic approach. (Ms., Massachusetts Institute of Technology).Google Scholar
Gelman, A., & Hill, J. 2006. Data analysis using regression and multilevel/hierarchical models. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guilliot, N., & Malkawi, N. 2006. When resumption determines reconstruction. In D. Baumer, D. Montero, & M. Scanlon (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp.168–176). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Han, C.-H., Elouazizi, N., Galeano, C., Gorgulu, E., Helberg, N., Hinnell, J., … Kirby, S. 2012. Processing strategies and resumptive pronouns in English. In N. Arnett & R. Bennett (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 30). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Heestand, D., Xiang, M., & Polinsky, M. 2011. Resumption still does not rescue islands. Linguistic Inquiry 42(1), 138–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hofmeister, P., & Norcliffe, E. 2013. Does resumption facilitate sentence comprehension? In P. Hofmeister & E. Norcliffe (Eds.), The core and the periphery: Data-driven perspectives on syntax inspired by Ivan A. Sag (pp.225–246). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Hofmeister, P., & Sag, I. A. 2010. Cognitive constraints on syntactic islands. Language 86(2), 366–415.Google Scholar
Keffala, B. 2011. Resumption and gaps in English relative clauses: Relative acceptability creates an illusion of “saving”. In C. Cathcart, I. H. Chen, G. Finley, S. Kang, C. S. Sandy, & E. Stickles (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th annual meeting of the berkeley linguistics society (pp.140–154). Berkeley, California: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Keffala, B., & Goodall, G. 2011. Do resumptive pronouns ever rescue illicit gaps in English? (Poster presented at CUNY 2011 Conference on Human Sentence Processing).Google Scholar
Kluender, R., & Kutas, M. 1993. Subjacency as a processing phenomenon. Language and Cognitive Processes 8(4), 573–633. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kroch, A. S. 1981. On the role of resumptive pronouns in amnestying island constraint violations. In Papers from the 17th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp.125–135). University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Langendoen, D. T. 1970. The accessibility of deep structures. In R. A. Jacobs & P. S. Rosenbaum (Eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar (pp.99–104). Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company.Google Scholar
Malkawi, N., & Guilliot, N. 2007. Reconstruction and islandhood in Jordanian Arabic. In M. Mughazy (Ed.), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics XX (pp.87–104). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, S. E., & Delaney, H. D. 2004. Designing experiments and analyzing data: A model comparison perspective. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, J. 1979. Transformational grammar and model theoretical semantics. Dordrecht: Reidel. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1990. Resumption, successive cyclicity, and the locality of operations. In S. Epstein & T. D. Seely (Eds.), Derivation and explanation (pp.184–226). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2006. Resumption. In M. Everaert & H. van Riemsdijk (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax (pp.84–117). Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McDaniel, D., & Cowart, W. 1999. Experimental evidence for a minimalist account of English resumptive pronouns. Cognition 70(2), B15–B24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McKee, C., & McDaniel, D. 2001. Resumptive pronouns in English relative clauses. Language Acquisition 9(2), 113–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meltzer-Asscher, A., Fadlon, J., Goldstein, K., & Holan, A. 2015. Direct object resumption in Hebrew: How modality of presentation and relative clause position affect acceptability. Lingua 166, 65–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pesetsky, D. 1987. Wh-in-situ: Movement and unselective binding. In E. J. Reuland & A. G. B. T. Meulen (Eds.), The representation of (in)definiteness. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Polinsky, M., Clemens, L. E., Morgan, A. M., Xiang, M., & Heestand, D. 2013. Resumption in English. In J. Sprouse (Ed.), Experimental syntax and island effects (pp.341–360). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prince, E. F. 1990. Syntax and discourse: A look at resumptive pronouns. In Proceedings of the sixteenth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General session and parasession on the legacy of Grice (pp.482–497). Berkeley, California: Department of Linguistics, Unversity of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L. 1982. Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publications. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ross, J. R. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Ryding, K. C. 2005. A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sells, P. 1984. Syntax and semantics of resumptive pronouns (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Shlonsky, U. 1992. Resumptive pronouns as a last resort. Linguistic Inquiry 23(3), 443–468.Google Scholar
2002. Constituent questions in Palestinian Arabic. In J. Ouhalla & U. Shlonsky (Eds.), Themes in Arabic and Hebrew syntax (pp.137– 160). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sprouse, J., Caponigro, I., Greco, C., & Cecchetto, C. 2016. Experimental syntax and the variation of island effects in English and Italian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 34(1), 307–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sprouse, J., Wagers, M., & Phillips, C. 2012. A test of the relation between working memory capacity and island effects. Language 88(1), 82–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szabolcsi, A. 2006. Strong vs. weak islands. In M. Everaert & H. van Riemsdijk (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax (Vol. 4). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wahba, W. A. -F. B. 1984. Wh-constructions in Egyptian Arabic (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar
Zukowski, A., & Larsen, J. 2004. The production of sentences that we fill their gaps. (Poster Presented at the 2004 CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of Maryland College Park).Google Scholar
Cited by (9)

Cited by nine other publications

Aldosari, Saad, Lauren Covey & Alison Gabriele
2024. Examining the source of island effects in native speakers and second language learners of English. Second Language Research 40:1 ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo
Al‐Aqarbeh, Rania & Jon Sprouse
2023. Island effects and amelioration by resumption in Jordanian Arabic: An auditory acceptability‐judgment study. Syntax DOI logo
Sprouse, Jon
2023. Acceptability Judgments. In The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Syntax, ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Pañeda, Claudia & Dave Kush
2022. Spanish embedded question island effects revisited: an experimental study. Linguistics 60:2 ► pp. 463 ff. DOI logo
A. Chacón, Dustin
2021. Acceptability (and Other) Experiments for Studying Comparative Syntax. In The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax, ► pp. 181 ff. DOI logo
Meltzer-Asscher, Aya
2021. Resumptive Pronouns in Language Comprehension and Production. Annual Review of Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 177 ff. DOI logo
Meltzer-Asscher, Aya
2021. Acceptability Studies in Semitic Languages. In The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax, ► pp. 505 ff. DOI logo
Sprouse, Jon & Sandra Villata
2021. Island Effects. In The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax, ► pp. 227 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2024. Wh-island Effects in Chinese [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 282], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 june 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.