Experimental Syntax and Island Effects

by Norbert Hornstein (Editor), Jon Sprouse (Editor)

This volume brings together cutting-edge experimental research from leaders in the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics to explore the nature of a phenomenon that has long been central to syntactic theory - 'island effects'. The chapters in this volume draw upon recent methodological advances in experimental methods in syntax, also known as 'experimental syntax', to investigate the underlying cognitive mechanisms that give rise to island effects. This volume presents a comprehensive empirical review of a contemporary debate in the field by including contributions from researchers representing a variety of points of view on the nature of island effects. This book is ideal for students and researchers interested in cutting-edge experimental techniques in linguistics, psycholinguistics and psychology.

Genres: Linguistics

432 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2013

Reviews

[Brent Woo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great introduction to the primary literature. While Cowart's Experimental Syntax is a hands-on manual, walking you through how to conduct acceptability experiments, this volume gives (1) a great overview of the debate about islands and (2) exposure to dozens of experiments to study and learn methodology from. Part I rehashes the great debate in Language between Sprouse et al and Hofmeister et al -- are island effects the result of grammatical or processing/Working Memory constraints? Part II discusses specific issues in islands, either specific types of islands like Negative Islands, or specific grammatical artifacts associated with islands like resumptive pronouns. The entire book is valuable as an implicit reference guide for methodology, presenting and discussing results, and embedding your research question in the literature in a meaningful way.

Most interesting to me was the Pearl & Sprouse Computational model, which gives a very slim and plausible statistical learning model for islands. Also interesting was the Goldberg chapter on unifying islands through a constraint on information structure.