II. Violations of the Wh island constraint and the subjacency condition

0. Ross (1967) noticed that a clause introduced by a wh pronoun is an island. This fact, generally accounted for by means of a primitive constraint (the Wh Island Constraint), can be explained by more general principles in the framework recently developed by Chomsky. In this framework, extraction from a clause is blocked by the following general conditions on rule application: (a) Tensed S Condition (TSC): no rule can involve two elements X and Yin (1) if a is a tensed sentence. (b) Specified Subject Condition (SSC): no rule can involve two elements X and Y in (1) if a has a subject distinct from Y and not controlled by X. ( c) Subjacency Condition: no rule can involve X and Y in (2) if both a and f3 are "bounding nodes" (which, for the time being, we may assume to be NP and S').