LINGUIST List 21.4472 Mon Nov 08 2010 Qs: Weak Islands: Arguments versus Adjuncts Editor for this issue: Danielle St. Jean <daniellelinguistlist.org> We'd like to remind readers that the responses to queries are usually best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This policy was instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems appropriate. In addition to posting a summary, we'd like to remind people that it is usually a good idea to personally thank those individuals who have taken the trouble to respond to the query. To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     John Winward , Weak Islands: Arguments versus Adjuncts Message 1: Weak Islands: Arguments versus Adjuncts Date: 04-Nov-2010 From: John Winward <winwardtu.ac.th> Subject: Weak Islands: Arguments versus Adjuncts E-mail this message to a friend I'm doing some empirical research with advanced L2 learners, looking at the way they process island constraints on extraction. I'm particularly interested in comparing argument and adjunct extraction from Weak (or Selective) Islands. To make my research precise, I'm trying to construct tokens in which operators act as arguments of the verb or adjuncts in matched pairs. 'Where' and (to a somewhat lesser extent) 'how' are straightforward enough to set up: Argument: John put the newspaper on the table. * John put the newspaper. * John put the newspaper on the table, and Fred did so on the floor. Where did Fred wonder whether John put the newspaper? etc. Adjunct: John read the newspaper on the train. John read the newspaper. John read the newspaper on the train, and Fred did so in the office. Where did Fred wonder whether John read the newspaper? etc. But what about 'when' and 'why'? I've got a stack of theoretical accounts, such as Szabolcsi's 2006 paper on Weak Islands, but none that cite directly relevant data. In Section 5, she states the familiar observation that arguments are not sensitive to WIs while adjuncts are. However, the illustrative tokens she gives for 'why' and 'when' extraction are adjunct extractions only (84 and 85), while the single example of a one-to-one contrast between adjunct and argument extraction (86) uses 'where' (and, ironically, she uses it to argue that, in the case of 'where', sensitivity *doesn't* depend much on whether it's an argument or an adjunct). Can anyone point to any data that compare adjunct/argument extractions directly, in this way? Or are all the accounts based on comparing - for example - an argument extraction of 'who(m)' with an adjunct extraction of 'when', and so on. John Linguistic Field(s): Syntax Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 08-Nov-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.