An asymmetry without theoretical consequences: Revisiting principle C reconstruction in ATB movement experimentally.
Timea Szarvas
May 2025 

The paper reports on three experiments assessing the pattern of principle C reconstruction in German ATB dependencies via coreference judgments. We find that (i) the principle C reconstruction diagnostic using PP modifiers as in the previous literature on ATB movement does not support the conclusion that reconstruction only targets the initial conjunct; (ii) depending on the task and the experimental condition, the size of the participant group showing no effect at all or an effect in the opposite direction, i.e. an increase of coreference under object extraction compared to subject extraction, varies between 53.3 and 74%, indicating that the experiment is measuring something other than principle C reconstruction; and (iii) coreference resolution in ATB dependencies is highly sensitive to the presence of context, a competing referent, and the phrasing of the experimental task. The findings are consistent with previous studies suggesting that the reconstruction of PP modifiers is compromised. I conclude that the pattern observed in ATB movement does not justify the claim that the representation of extracted material is differs between conjuncts. The increased distance between the R-expression and the pronoun is a more likely cause for the slight asymmetry.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008992 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the 55th North East Linguistic Society
keywords:	atb, principle c, pp modifiers, reconstruction, experimental, coreference, syntax
previous versions:	v2 [April 2025] v1 [April 2025]
Downloaded:	167 times

 

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