A SEMANTIC ACCOUNT OF ISLAND-EXTRACTION

Abstract

This paper points out the fact that the resultant object shows strong deviancy when it is extracted out of a wh-island, which cannot be explained within Rizzi's (1990) ECP account. I argue that the acceptability of island extraction is subject to a semantic constraint and propose the pre-existence condition. Furthermore, our analysis provides a unified account of the unacceptability of island-extraction of some other postverbal constituents: eventive objects, true cognate objects, nominal idiom chunks, lexically selected manner adverbials, adjectival predicates, some types of measure phrases, and fake objects in unergative resultatives.