Movement and islands: a key issue in Generative Grammar

Marina Rosa Ana Augusto

doi:10.31513/linguistica.2017.v13n2a14038

Abstract

This paper provides a brief overview of the main proposals, adopted in the generative framework, for island constraints. Starting from Ross (1967) through minimalist accounts, it addresses the most relevant concepts related to islands, emphasizing the search for a theoretical account for the phenomenon, but also stressing the challenges this kind of data poses for formal approaches. Some alternative accounts to islands, particularly processing considerations, are also brieﬂy commented upon. The article concludes highlighting some compatibilities between both approaches and stressing the relevance of a syntactic treatment to islands.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Este artigo apresenta um panorama condensado das principais propostas, adotadas no quadro gerativista, para o fenômeno das ilhas sintáticas. Partindo de Ross (1967) até estudos conduzidos na abordagem minimalista, o estudo apresenta os principais conceitos relacionados ao fenômeno, enfatizando a busca por uma proposta teoricamente embasada, ao mesmo tempo em que desafios se colocam para a abordagem formal a partir desse tipo de dado. Algumas abordagens alternativas, particularmente considerações de processamento, são também apresentadas. Defende-se que embora haja compatibilidades entre as abordagens formal e de processamento, um tratamento sintático das restrições de ilhas é desejável.

Highlights

Movement has been a key concept in transformational theories of generative grammar
The aim of this paper is to present a brief retrospective of how movement and syntactic islands, in particular, have been treated throughout the different proposals Chomskyan generative literature has put forward in this long and certainly productive journey
There is an effort to account for island constraints from a processing perspective, which relies on two facts: the difficulty that object dependencies seem to impose for comprehension and the extra processing cost imposed by the need to access discourse referents at clause boundaries

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Movement has been a key concept in transformational theories of generative grammar. It is how displacement phenomena have been characterized: it relates two syntactic positions – usually the position where an element is spelled out (in bold) and its corresponding position where it can be semantically interpreted (marked as __ in (1) below):. One of the key issues concerning movement was brought to the scene by Ross (1967), who approached the subject not from the point of view of possible movements found in human languages, but rather distinguished a number of syntactic environments from which movement wouldn’t be allowed. These configurations came to be known as syntactic islands. The aim of this paper is to present a brief retrospective of how movement and syntactic islands, in particular, have been treated throughout the different proposals Chomskyan generative literature has put forward in this long and certainly productive journey

MOVEMENT AS TRANSFORMATIONS

MINIMALIST ANALYSES AND ISLAND CONSTRAINTS

STRONG AND WEAK ISLANDS AND ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES

CONCLUDING REMARKS