The observation of superiority on multiple movements to the Italian left-periphery: Intervention effects on nested dependencies and the role of information-structure features.

Abstract

Young Romance speakers can structure their sentences by dislocating multiple constituents to the left periphery, resulting in non-canonical word orders. Production data, however, show that this ordering is rigid: only SOV sequences are attested, an observation reminiscent of Superiority. The first goal of the paper is to replicate this observation in comprehension; the second is to derive the Subject-over-Object pattern in terms of Intervention, with the additional assumption that only nested chains count as interveners. Three experiments are reported here. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 show that SOVs interpretations are systematically favored over OSV and that not only Number features, but also a [+Topic] feature help to overcome intervention. Experiment 3 addresses a potential confound related to the clitic. These results integrate existing intervention-based accounts, traditionally built on relatives, providing not only new evidence coming from matrix clauses, but also investigating the role of information-structure features.