Abstract
Island constraints on extraction are not universal. In Slavic languages they are stronger than in English, and in Scandinavian languages they are weaker. At least this is so for extraction from clausal complements to verbs, which I will focus on in this paper. As a first approximation (inaccurate but adequate for purposes of this section): all complement clauses are islands in Slavic, only WH-clauses are islands in English, and not even WH-clauses are islands in Scandinavian. We can conclude that island constraints are not fully innate; at least some children have to learn at least some facts about extractability. We can also establish, by reference to the Subset Principle, WHICH children have to do the learning.1 It must be the children learning a more generous language like Swedish, rather than those learning a more restricted language like Polish. To determine who learns we consider who has the necessary data to learn from. Given the assumption (standard though not undisputed) that learners have no access to systematic negative input,2 it follows that language-specific facts about islands must be learnable from positive data alone, i.e., by hearing sentences of the language. So it must be the Swedish learners and the English learners who discover from their input that it is possible to extract from complement clauses. The Polish learners (and hence ALL children) must believe innately that complement clauses are islands.3 In general: the strongest island constraints must be innate, and they must be progressively weakened by learners who encounter constructions that disobey them.
Many of the ideas concerning the general approach to language acquisition assumed here were developed in collaboration with Stephen Crain. My thanks to him, to the editors of this volume, to Nomi Erteschik-Shir, and to Deidre Quinn, for their advice on this paper.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aoun, J., Hornstein, N., Lightfoot, D., and Weinberg, A.: 1987, `Two types of locality’, Linguistic Inquiry 18, 537–577.
Bolinger, D.: 1981, `Consonance, dissonance and grammaticality’, Language and Communication 1, 189–206.
Bowerman, M.: 1988, `The “No negative evidence” problem: How do children avoid constructing an overly general grammar?’, in J. A. Hawkins (ed.), Explaining Language Universals, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, England.
Chomsky, N.: 1965, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax,MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Chomsky, N.: 1971, `Deep structure, surface structure and semantic interpretation’, in
D. Steinberg and L. Jakobovits (eds.), Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
Chomsky, N.: 1980, `On binding’, Linguistic Inquiry 11.1,1–46.
Chomsky, N.: 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris Publications, Dordrecht, Holland.
Chomsky, N.: 1986, Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use, Praeger, New York.
Chomsky, N. and Halle, M.: 1968, The Sound Pattern of English, Harper and Row, New York.
Chomsky, N. and Lasnik, H.: 1977, `Filters and control’, Linguistic Inquiry 8, 425504.
Cichocki, W.: 1983, `Multiple WH-questions in Polish: A two-comp analysis’, Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 4, 53–71.
Cinque, G.: 1990, Types of A’-dependencies, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph Series, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Clark, R.: 1989, `On the relationship between input data and parameter setting’, in Proceedings of NELS 19, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Clements, G. N.: 1979, `Binding domains in Kikuyu’, paper presented at the 10th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois.
Engdahl, E.: 1982, `Restrictions on unbounded dependencies in Swedish’, in E. Engdahl and E. Ejerhed (eds.), Readings on Unbounded Dependencies in Scandinavian Languages, Umea Studies in the Humanities 43, Almqvist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, Sweden.
Erteschik-Shir, N.: 1973, On the Nature of Island Constraints, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Erteschik-Shir, N. and Lappin, S.: 1979, `Dominance and the functional explanation of island phenomena’, Theoretical Linguistics 6, 41–86.
Fodor, J. D.: 1978, `Parsing strategies and constraints on transformations’, Linguistic Inquiry 9, 427–473.
Fodor, J. D.: 1983, `Phrase structure parsing and the island constraints’, Linguistics and Philosophy 6, 163–223.
Fodor, J. D.: 1985, `The procedural solution to the projection problem’, unpublished ms., University of Connecticut; presented as `Why learn lexical rules?’ at the Tenth Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development.
Fodor, J. D.: 1989a, `Learning the periphery’, in R. J. Matthews and W. Demopoulos (eds.), Learnability and Linguistic Theory, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Fodor, J. D.: 1989b, `Principle-based learning’, in R. Rieber (ed.), CUNYForum 14, 59–67.
Fodor, J. D.: 1990a, `Parameters and parameter-setting in a phrase structure grammar’, in L. Frazier and J. de Villiers (eds.), Language Processing and Language Acquisition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands.
Fodor, J. D.: 1990b, `Cross-serial dependencies and SUBCAT percolation’, in R. Rieber (ed.), CunyForum 15, 53–75.
Fodor, J. D.: in press, `Learnability of phrase structure grammars’, in R. Levine (ed.), Formal Grammar: Theory and Implementation, Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science,University of British Columbia Press.
Fodor, J. D. and Crain, S.: 1987, `Simplicity and generality of rules in language acquisition’, in B. MacWhinney (ed.), Mechanisms of Language Acquisition, Proceedings of the 20th Annual Carnegie-Mellon Conference on Cognition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Fodor, J. D. and Crain, S.: 1990, `Phrase structure parameters’, Linguistics and Philosophy 13, 591–633.
Fodor, J. D. and Crain, S.: in prep., On the Form of Innate Linguistic Knowledge,to be published by Bradford Books, Cambridge, Mass.
Gazdar, G., Klein, E., Pullum, G. K., and Sag, I. A.: 1985, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Gazdar, G. and Pullum, G. K.: 1985, `Computationally relevant properties of natural languages and their grammars’, New Generation Computing 3, 273–306. Also CLSI Report No. CSLI-85–24, CSLI, Stanford University, California.
Grimshaw, J. and Pinker, S.: 1989, `Positive and negative evidence in language acquisition’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12.2, 341–342.
Hornstein, N. and Weinberg, A.: 1981, `Case theory and preposition stranding’, Linguistic Inquiry 12.1, 55–91.
Jacobson, P.: 1987, `Review of Gazdar et al. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar’, Linguistics and Philosophy 10, 389–426.
Kayne, R. S.: 1980. S.: 1980, `Extensions of binding and case-marking’, Linguistic Inquiry 11, 75–96. Reprinted in Kayne (1983).
Kayne, R. S.: 1981a. S.: 1981a, `Two notes on the NIC’, in A. Belletti, L. Brandi, and L. Rizzi (eds.), Theory of Markedness in Generative Grammar: Proceedings of the 1979 GLOW Conference, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Printed in Kayne (1983).
Kayne, R. S.: 1981b. S.: 1981b, ‘ECP extensions’, Linguistic Inquiry 12, 93–133. Reprinted in Kayne (1983).
Kayne, R. S.: 1981c. S.: 1981c, `On certain differences between English and French’, Linguistic Inquiry 12, 349–371. Reprinted in Kayne (1983).
Kayne, R. S.: 1983, Connectedness and Binary Branching, Foris Publications, Dordrecht.
Keenan, E. O.: 1985, `Passive in the world’s languages’, in T. Shopen (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume 1: Clause Structure. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Klein, E.: 1990, The Null-Prep Phenomenon in Second Language Acquisition,unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, CUNY.
Koster, J.: 1978, `Conditions, empty nodes, and markedness’, Linguistic Inquiry 9.4, 551–593.
Kroch, A.: ms., `Amount quantification, referentiality, and long wh-movement’, University of Pennsylvania.
Kuno, S.: 1973, `Constraints on internal clauses and sentential subjects’, Linguistic Inquiry 4, 363–385.
Lebeaux, D.: 1990, The grammatical nature of the acquisition sequence: Adjoin-a and the formation of relative clauses’, in L. Frazier and J. de Villiers (eds.), Language Processing and Language Acquisition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands.
Lillo-Martin, D.: this volume, `Sentences as islands: On the boundedness of A’-movement in American Sign Language’.
McCloskey, J.: 1979, Transformational Syntax and Model Theoretic Semantics, Reidel, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
McDaniel, D.: 1989, `Partial and multiple Wh-movement’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7.4, 565–604.
Pinker, S.: 1984, Language Learnability and Language Development, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Pinker, S.: 1989, Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Pollard, C. and Sag, I. A.: 1987, Information-Based Syntax and Semantics, Volume 1 Fundamentals, CSLI Lecture Notes Number 13, CSLI, Stanford, California.
Pollard, C. and Sag, I. A.: in press, Information-Based Syntax and Semantics, Volume 2 Topics in Binding and Control, CSLI Lecture Notes Series,CSLI, Stanford, California.
Riemsdijk, H. van and Williams, E. S.: 1986, Introduction to the Theory of Grammar, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Rizzi, L.: 1989, Relativized Minimality, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Sag, I. A. and Pollard, C.: 1989, `Subcategorization and head-driven phrase structure’, in M. R. Baltin and A. S. Kroch (eds.), Alternative Conceptions of Phrase Structure, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Shieber, S.: 1985, `Evidence against the context-freeness of natural language’, Linguistics and Philosophy 8, 333–343.
Shieber, S.: 1986, `GPSG: A simple reconstruction’, Technical Note 384, SRI International, Menlo Park, California.
Toman, J.: 1981, `Aspects of multiple wh-movement in Polish and Czech’, in R. May and J. Koster (eds.), Levels of Syntactic Representation, Foris Publications, Dordrecht, Holland.
Uszkoreit, H.: 1986a, `Constraints on order’, Report No. CSLI-86–46, Stanford University, Stanford, California.
Uszkoreit, H.: 1986b, `Linear precedence in discontinuous constituents’, Report No. CSLI-86–47, Stanford University, Stanford, California.
Wexler, K.: 1987, `On the nonconcrete relation between evidence and acquired language’, in B. Lust (ed.), Studies in the Acquisition of Anaphora, Volume II Applying the Constraints, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.
Wexler, K. and Culicover, P.: 1980, Formal Principles of Language Acquisition, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Wexler, K. and Manzini, M. R.: 1987, `Parameters and learnability in binding theory’, in T. Roeper and E. Williams (eds.), Parameter Setting, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.
Zaenen, A.: 1983, `On syntactic binding’, Linguistic Inquiry 14, 469–504.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fodor, J.D. (1992). Islands, Learnability and the Lexicon. In: Goodluck, H., Rochemont, M. (eds) Island Constraints. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1980-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1980-3_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4148-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-1980-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive