Basics of Language for Language Learners

Second editionTools and Strategies for Language Learning -- Sounding Like a Native Speaker -- Thinking Like a Native Speaker -- Acting Like a Native SpeakerItem not openly available

The Radical Unacceptability Hypothesis: Accounting for Unacceptability without Universal Constraints

The Radical Unacceptability Hypothesis (RUH) has been proposed as a way of explaining the unacceptability of extraction from islands and frozen structures. This hypothesis explicitly assumes a distinction between unacceptability due to violations of local well-formedness conditions—conditions on constituency, constituent order, and morphological form—and unacceptability due to extra-grammatical factors. We explore the RUH with respect to classical islands, and extend it to a broader range of phenomena, including freezing, A′ chain interactions, zero-relative clauses, topic islands, weak crossover, extraction from subjects and parasitic gaps, and sensitivity to information structure. The picture that emerges is consistent with the RUH, and suggests more generally that the unacceptability of extraction from otherwise well-formed configurations reflects non-syntactic factors, not principles of grammar.Peer Reviewe

Syntactic and semantic investigations.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics. Thesis. 1971. Ph.D.Vita.Bibliography: leaves 274-280.Ph.D

Syntax

xi, 305 hlm.; 22 cm