Factive islands in Russian: An experimental study of relative clause dependencies
Mikhail Knyazev
May 2024
 

It is generally assumed that complements of factive predicates are less transparent for extraction compared to nonfactive predicates. It is also assumed that the violation produced by such extraction is relatively weak, at least for certain types of elements such as (object) arguments, as opposed to other types of elements such as adjuncts. This has led to the notion that complements of factive predicates are weak, or selective, islands. This paper compares complements of factive and nonfactive predicates with respect to argument and adjunct extraction in relative clause dependencies. The question is investigated in two acceptability rating studies, testing DP argument (Experiment 1) and PP adjunct (Experiment 2) extraction. An important feature of the design is that it tests both bare (čto) clauses and nominalized (to, čto) clauses (in oblique/object-of-P positions) with both classes of predicates using the nominalized clauses as a benchmark for strong islandhood. The results showed that factivity of the predicate is associated with a decrease in acceptability for both argument and adjunct extraction, whereas adjunct extraction did not show any degradation relative to argument extraction. Nominalization also lowered the acceptability of extraction but, surprisingly, not for adjunct extraction, which is tentatively explained as the result of processing facilitation (adjunct processing advantage). The results are best explained by two additively combining gradient constraints (penalizing extraction from complements of factive predicates and extraction from nominalized clauses). The paper ends with a brief discussion of the experimental results in the light of different approaches to weak islands, focusing on featural Relativized Minimality.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/008734
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Acta Linguistica Petropolitana [DOI: 10.30842/alp23065737202358407]
keywords: factivity, weak islands, nominalized clauses, argument-adjunct asymmetry, gradience in grammar, syntax
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