Wh-island effects and d-linking effects across languages
Zheng Shen, Beth Chan
October 2024 

This paper looks into wh-island effects and d-linking effects in wh-fronting and wh-in situ questions in American English and Colloquial Singapore English. Previous work by Villata and Sprouse show a partial amelioration effect of d-linked wh-elements across certain islands (e.g. whether island) in American English, as is predicted by the featural Relativized Minimality analysis. Our experiment in American English replicated the pattern. However, our experiment on wh-fronting questions in Colloquial Singapore English did not show partial amelioration. Instead, long distance questions are improved by the use of d-linked wh-elements to the similar extent, regardless whether an island is crossed. We propose that in Colloquial Singapore English, the C head probing d-linked wh-elements is specified as [+Q] and not [+Q, +N], and the general improvement results from the processing facilitation of d-linked elements (Hofmeister and Sag 2010). Our experiment on wh-in situ questions in Colloquial Singapore English did not show any effect of d-linking (similar to Chen 2024's results in Mandarin Chinese). We argue that our results support a dual source analysis for d-linking effect: a grammatical source and a processing source.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008523 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Proceedings of the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
keywords:	experimental syntax, wh-island, d-linking, wh-in situ, syntax
Downloaded:	529 times

 

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