Nonsyntactic Explanations of Island Constraints

The explanation of island phenomena has been a central feature of formal grammatical theory practically since its inception. However, a growing number of linguists have provided explanations for these phenomena that are not based on purely syntactic constraints. Some have proposed alternative explanations that appeal to information structure or to semantic information, and others find the basis for island constraints to lie in processing. This review documents the full range of nonsyntactic explanations of island constraints.

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