Definite DP island effect across dependency types
Zheng Shen, Meghan Lim
June 2024 

This paper uses the definite DP island in English as a case study to evaluate predictions of a recent discourse-based analysis of island, the Focus-Background Conflict (FBC) constraint proposed in Abeillé et al. 2020. Abeillé et al. (2020) explicitly argue that island effects under the FBC constraint are predicted to only show up in filler-gap dependencies involving focus, e.g. wh-questions; and should be absent in constructions like relative clauses where a dependency is established but its discourse function does not involve focus. Citing Grosu (1981), the author claim that the definite DP island effect only holds of wh-questions and not relative clauses, thus is accounted for by the FBC constraint, whereas its effect in a relative clause was observed since Ross (1967). This paper teases apart the contradictory empirical claims with experimental methods. We show that both focus movement in wh-questions and non-focus movement in relative clauses show the definite island effect, challenging Abeillé et al. (2020)’s approach to locality restrictions.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/007747 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	under review
keywords:	experimental syntax, definite dp island, focus background conflict constraint, syntax
previous versions:	v1 [November 2023]
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