Condition C in German A'-movement
- In recent experimental work, arguments for or against Condition C reconstruction in A'-movement have been based on low/high availability of coreference in sentences with and without A'-movement. We argue that this reasoning is problematic: It involves arbitrary thresholds, and the results are potentially confounded by the different surface orders of the compared structures and non-syntactic factors. We present three experiments with designs that do not require defining thresholds of 'low' or 'high' coreference values. Instead, we focus on grammatical contrasts (wh-movement vs. relativization, subject vs. object wh-movement) and aim to identify and reduce confounds. The results show that reconstruction for A'-movement of DPs is not very robust in German, contra previous findings. Our results are compatible with the view that the surface order and non-syntactic factors (e.g. plausibility, referential accessibility of an R-expression) heavily influence coreference possibilities. Thus, the data argue against a theory that includes bothIn recent experimental work, arguments for or against Condition C reconstruction in A'-movement have been based on low/high availability of coreference in sentences with and without A'-movement. We argue that this reasoning is problematic: It involves arbitrary thresholds, and the results are potentially confounded by the different surface orders of the compared structures and non-syntactic factors. We present three experiments with designs that do not require defining thresholds of 'low' or 'high' coreference values. Instead, we focus on grammatical contrasts (wh-movement vs. relativization, subject vs. object wh-movement) and aim to identify and reduce confounds. The results show that reconstruction for A'-movement of DPs is not very robust in German, contra previous findings. Our results are compatible with the view that the surface order and non-syntactic factors (e.g. plausibility, referential accessibility of an R-expression) heavily influence coreference possibilities. Thus, the data argue against a theory that includes both reconstruction and a hard Condition C constraint. There is a residual contrast between sentences with subject/object movement, which is compatible with an account without reconstruction (and an additional non-syntactic factor) or an account with reconstruction (and a soft Condition C constraint).…
Author details: | Martin SalzmannORCiDGND, Marta WierzbaORCiDGND, Doreen GeorgiORCiD |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226722000214 |
ISSN: | 0022-2267 |
ISSN: | 1469-7742 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of linguistics : JL |
Subtitle (English): | tackling challenges in experimental research on reconstruction |
Publisher: | Cambridge Univ. Press |
Place of publishing: | London [u.a.] |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2022/06/09 |
Publication year: | 2023 |
Release date: | 2023/12/11 |
Tag: | A'-movement; Condition C; German; binding; experimental syntax; reconstruction; relative clauses; wh-questions |
Volume: | 59 |
Issue: | 3 |
Number of pages: | 46 |
First page: | 577 |
Last Page: | 622 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Hybrid Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |