Cover not available

Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2021
Edited by Mark Dingemanse, Eva van Lier and Jorrig Vogels
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 38] 2021
► pp. 4–20

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF

The effect of filler complexity and context on the acceptability of wh-island violations in Dutch

 | Radboud University
 | Radboud University
 | Radboud University
 | Radboud University
 | Radboud University
 | Radboud University
 | Radboud University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 29 October 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00047.bel
Abstract
Acceptability judgements of syntactic island violations are often claimed to improve by either increasing the complexity of the wh-filler phrase or integrating the violating sentence into a discourse. In two acceptability judgement tasks, we looked at wh-island violations in Dutch by varying the complexity of the filler phrase and by presenting the sentences either in isolation or with a preceding discourse. We found that neither variable had a significant effect in isolation, but that only in their combination a significant effect was observed. The same effect showed up in non-island conditions, however. This is in contrast to findings in the literature on English and French and suggests that the complexity effect in Dutch is not syntactic. We therefore conclude that wh-islands are strong islands in Dutch (Broekhuis, Hans & Norbert Corver. 2015. Syntax of Dutch: verbs and verb phrases. Volume 3. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and show that the contrast with English and French can be made to follow from featural Relativized Minimality (. 2017. “Comparing extractions from wh-islands and superiority effects.” Wiener Linguistische Gazette 821: 253–261.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), taking into account the verb second property of Dutch.
Article outline
  • 1.Amelioration effects in island violations
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • Participants
    • Design and materials
    • Procedure
    • Data analysis
    • Results
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • Participants
    • Design and materials
    • Procedure
    • Data analysis
    • Results
      • Discussion
  • 4.General discussion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
References (21)
References
Barr, Dale J., Levy, Roger, Scheepers, Christoph, & Harry J. Tily. 2013. “Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal.” Journal of Memory and Language 68 (3): 255–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Broekhuis, Hans & Norbert Corver. 2015. Syntax of Dutch: verbs and verb phrases. Volume 3. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2013. “Problems of Projection.” Lingua 1301: 33–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donkers, Jantien, Hoeks, John & Laurie Stowe. 2013. “D-Linking or set-restriction? Processing which-questions in Dutch.” Language and Cognitive Processes 28 (1–2): 9–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedmann, Naama, Belletti, Adriana & Luigi Rizzi. 2009. “Relativized relatives: types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies.” Lingua 119 (1): 67–88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodall Grant. 2015. “The D-linking effect on extraction from islands and non-islands.” Frontiers in psychology 51: 1493. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hofmeister, Philip & Ivan A. Sag. 2010. “Cognitive constraints and island effects.” Language 86 (2): 366–415. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kush, Dave, Lohndal, Terje & Jon Sprouse. 2019. “On the island sensitivity of topicalization in Norwegian: An experimental investigation.: Language 95 (3): 393–420. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Brockhoff, Per & Rune Christensen. 2017. ”lmerTest Package: Tests in linear mixed effects models.” Journal of Statistical Software 82 (13): 1–26. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matuschek, Hannes, Kliegl, Reinhold, Vasishth, Shravan, Baayen, Harald & Douglas Bates. 2017. “Balancing Type I error and power in linear mixed models.” Journal of Memory and Language 941: 305–315. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 1987. “Wh-in-Situ: movement and unselective binding”. The Representation of (in)Definiteness ed. by Eric Reuland and Alice ter Meulen, 98–129. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2019. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Available at: [URL]
Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized minimality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. “Comparing extractions from wh-islands and superiority effects.” Wiener Linguistische Gazette 821: 253–261.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sabel, Joachim. 2002. A minimalist analysis of syntactic islands. The Linguistic Review 191: 271–315. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sprouse, John, Matthew W. Wagers, and Colin Phillips. 2013. “Deriving competing predictions from grammatical approaches and reductionist approaches to island effects”. Experimental Syntax and Island Effects ed by John Sprouse, and Norbert Hornstein, 21–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sprouse, Jon, Caponigro, Ivano, Greco, Ciro & Carlo Cecchetto. 2016. “Experimental syntax and the variation of island effects in English and Italian.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 341: 307–344. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Starke, Michal. 2001. Move dissolves into merge: a theory of locality. Doctoral dissertation. University of Geneva.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna & Frans Zwarts. 1993. ”Weak islands and an algebraic semantics of scope taking. Natural Language Semantics 11: 235–284. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Villata, Sandra, Rizzi, Luigi, & Julie Franck. 2016. “Intervention effects and relativized minimality: new experimental evidence from graded judgements.” Lingua 1791: 76–96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 2011. The syntax of Dutch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Bondevik, Ingrid & Terje Lohndal
2023. Extraction from finite adjunct clauses: an investigation of relative clause dependencies in Norwegian. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8:1 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2024. Wh-island Effects in Chinese [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 282], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue