Island constraints are not the result of sentence processing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v2i0.4068Keywords:
island constraints, sentence processing, cross-linguistic comparisonAbstract
On the basis of a comparison between sentence judgements in English vs. Akan, we argue that island constraints (positions to which a question word can be linked) cannot be reduced to the effects of the sentence processing mechanism. Questions that violate constraints are judged better in Akan than in English, although the challenge to the sentence processor is the same for the two languages. We argue specifically that the constraints cannot be reduced to the effects of specificity of the question phrase, and must be attributed to two different grammatical mechanisms for the languages.
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Published
2017-06-12
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Published by the LSA with permission of the author(s) under a CC BY 4.0 license.
How to Cite
Goodluck, Helen, Frank Tsiwah, and Kofi Saah. 2017. “Island Constraints Are Not the Result of Sentence Processing”. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 2 (June): 15:1–5. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v2i0.4068.