[Syntax] Islands

Summary

In this video, TrevTutor delves into the concept of syntactic islands, which are grammatical constructions that do not allow movement of words out of them, resulting in ungrammatical strings if attempted. The video explores five types of islands: wh islands, adjunct islands, subject islands, complex DP islands, and coordinate structure constraints. Each type is explained with examples illustrating why certain movements result in ungrammaticality. The discussion aims to provide a foundational understanding of these linguistic structures, often explored in advanced syntax courses.

Highlights

• Wh islands occur when a wh-word in the spec CP position blocks movement. 🚧
• Adjunct islands, like 'because' or 'if' clauses, inherently prevent movement. 🔒
• Subject islands don't allow parts of a DP to be extracted, requiring whole DP movement. 👀
• Complex DP islands can't move wh-words out of CPs inside DPs. 🔐
• Coordinate structure constraints, while not true islands, require extraction from both coordinated structures. 🔗

Key Takeaways

• Syntactic islands prevent movement, causing ungrammatical strings if violated. 🚫
• There are five main types of islands discussed: wh, adjunct, subject, complex DP, and coordinate structure. 🏝️
• Understanding islands helps in analyzing sentence structures without drawing complex trees. 🌳

Overview

Syntactic islands are an intriguing aspect of syntax, representing constraints where certain movements within sentences create grammatical errors. TrevTutor explains these islands and uses illuminating examples to make sense of why attempts to move certain words lead to ungrammatical strings. Understanding these helps in both constructing sentences accurately and parsing their meanings.

The video highlights five central types of islands: wh islands, adjunct islands, subject islands, complex DP islands, and the coordinate structure constraint. Each one is unique in its operation and rules governing movement. For example, in wh islands, a word in the spec CP position can prevent movement, just as adjunct islands naturally resist any internal movement of their elements.

Finally, TrevTutor emphasizes the practical side of recognizing these islands, suggesting that instead of drawing complex syntactic trees, one can often deduce these constructions by analyzing sentence strings. This approach not only speeds up the process but also enhances one's intuitive grasp of syntax. These insights are invaluable for anyone diving deeper into advanced linguistic studies.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Syntactic Islands The chapter introduces the concept of syntactic islands, which are syntactic constructions that do not allow movement out of them. Attempting to move words out of these islands results in ungrammatical sentences. The chapter aims to explore five different types of syntactic islands, starting with the concept of 'wh islands', exemplified by sentences like 'I wondered who saw what.'
• 01:00 - 03:00: WH-Islands The chapter discusses the concept of WH-Islands in linguistics. It explains that in sentences like 'who saw what', the 'what' is in an 'island' position, making it impossible to extract without causing grammaticality issues. The sentence 'what did I wonder who saw' becomes ungrammatical because 'who' is in the 'specifier CP' position, which restricts movement out of the embedded clause. This illustrates a key aspect of syntactic structure in language.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Adjunct Islands The chapter explores the concept of movement in syntax, particularly focusing on the restrictions imposed by specifier positions (spec CP) in clauses. It explains how when a determiner phrase (DP) like "what" attempts to move through the spec CP position to exit a clause, it encounters an issue if the position is already occupied, here by "who." This prevents "what" from moving as intended, thus illustrating the concept of adjunct islands, where certain syntactic positions block movement across clauses.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Subject Islands The chapter discusses ungrammatical sentences resulting from skipping certain syntactic positions. It highlights the necessity for wh-movement to be cyclic, passing through specific checkpoints (spec CP), to maintain grammatical structure. The text explores why direct object movement of 'what' is not feasible, introducing the concept of Subject Islands, where certain components (wh-items and adjuncts) form restrictive structures that limit grammatical movement within sentences.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Complex DP Islands The chapter explores the concept of 'Complex DP Islands' by examining the structure of sentences that involve complex dependencies, specifically those that incorporate embedded questions and the difficulties they present in formulation. The example provided is the sentence 'Jane is mad because Jeff dated who,' illustrating the ambiguity when transforming this into a question: 'Who is Jane mad because Jeff dated?' This alteration results in a loss of clear meaning, underscoring the challenges inherent in maintaining meaning across these complex sentence structures.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Coordinate Structure Constraint The chapter "Coordinate Structure Constraint" discusses the grammatical concept where adjuncts, or additional information attached to sentences, act as islands from which no movement can occur. This phenomenon does not have a thorough explanation like Spike's EP, but is supported by data indicating that adjuncts are inherently restrictive in terms of sentence structure manipulation.
• 11:00 - 15:00: Conclusion and Summary The chapter discusses the concept of adjunct islands in linguistics, highlighting their robustness and resistance to movement without causing sentences to become ungrammatical. Adjunct islands often begin with words like 'because', 'if', or 'whether', and are a fundamental concept in understanding sentence structure. The text suggests that similar constructs, such as subject islands, exist but does not delve deeply into them. The chapter serves as a summary of these types of linguistic islands, emphasizing their importance in syntactic theory.

[Syntax] Islands Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 in this video we'll talk about syntactic islands what are islands well islands are syntactic constructions that do not allow movement out of them and if you do try to move words out of these islands then you'll get an ungrammatical string so there is five different types of islands we'll look at in this video so let's jump right into it the first one are wh islands so here's a grammatical sentence I wondered who saw what and I'm telling you that
• 00:30 - 01:00 this who saw what is an island so for instance we can't pull out the what in the object position because then we'll get an ungrammatical string what did I wonder who saw why is this well this is because this wh who is in the speck CP position and what does that mean well in order to move out of an embedded clause
• 01:00 - 01:30 a DP has to move through the spec CP position so when what tries to pass through the spec CP position to move out of the invented clause it cannot get into that spec CP position because it is already occupied by the word whoo so to kind of draw a little tree so let's say there's a CP we have who here what is somewhere all the way down here it tries to move up to who to get out of the clause but who was already there therefore it can't make that movement so
• 01:30 - 02:00 what's happening here in the sentence to make an ungrammatical string is it skipping that spec CP position and just moving all the way to the top but wh pivot is cyclic so it does have to go through spec CP in order to create a chromatic --all sentence this is why we cannot do the object movement of what in this case so those are wh items another type of islands are the adjunct
• 02:00 - 02:30 islands so here's a nice sentence jane is mad because jeff dated who and in this case we don't know who Jeff dated but Jeff dating someone made Jane mad so let's move this through out and make a question with it who is Jane mad because Jeff dated hmm this doesn't really make any sense so this doesn't have the same meaning is Jane is mad because Jeff dated who and said who is Jane mad because Jeff dated it doesn't
• 02:30 - 03:00 capture the same meaning in fact it sounds pretty ungrammatical and this doesn't have an explanation like spikes ep it just happens to be the fact that adjuncts are islands so there's no movement out of adjuncts anyone be wondering that's not a very good explanation but this is just an explanation that supports data there aren't adjuncts that you can move out of
• 03:00 - 03:30 in fact adjuncts are very robust they don't want to be changed too much so when you do try to do movement out of an adjunct sentences become ungrammatical and weird at least in English so those are adjunct islands they usually begin with words like because or if or whether and you can construct many sentences with these okay so that's Patrick Islands the third type are subject islands so for instance and so just
• 03:30 - 04:00 saying what tasted good we could maybe know something about what that it is that subject so we know what's a part of something but that part of what tasted good well let's try to move that wh-word out what that part of tasted good mmm that's not okay and this is because when we do this WH movement in subjects we have to move the whole DP so what's happening
• 04:00 - 04:30 here is we have a teepee we have this DP subject and we'll have CP at some point up here and essentially we want to do movement from the DP and the TPA to the DP in the CP so we can move the whole thing however we can't just take a part of it inside so this what is deeply embedded inside the TV that inside the teeth the DP so
• 04:30 - 05:00 that part of what well we can't just take this little bit out of it and move it up we have to move the whole DP so this is creating the ungrammaticality this is a subject item alright so those are subject islands I'm touching on these very quickly but I'm just trying to give you a general overview of what these islands are how they're constructed and just a quick explanation of why this doesn't work so those are subject islands adjunct islands and wh
• 05:00 - 05:30 islands now we can move on to complex DP Islands and these are slightly more complicated so for instance we can have sentences like what did Mary claim that she read where the reading of something has moved to the front of the sentence and we can ask about this so what a mary claim that she read in fact something important here that this claim is a verb so let's compare this with the second sentence what did Mary make the claim that she read this doesn't have the same
• 05:30 - 06:00 meaning as what did she read so this what here does not really correspond to this what up here they don't have the same meaning and the idea behind for this island is that we can't move wh words out of cps that are inside of DTS so here in the first sentence we see a CP just on its own we can move out of the CP freely because this can move into
• 06:00 - 06:30 the spec CP position and do cyclic movement up however for this sentence what does Mary make the claim that she read we can move to spec CP pretty easily but then if we want to move further we have another phase here we have this DP that's blocking further movement outside so we can't take this WH word and move it up to the top of the embedded clause because this is deeply embedded inside of a DP so there's a CP
• 06:30 - 07:00 inside of a DP and when we have this we cannot move our WH words out of it creating a complex the island alright normally you probably won't discuss these in a typical syntax one course specifically the complex DG Islands but just in case you do encounter them this is the general explanation that's given finally one of the more intuitive ones
• 07:00 - 07:30 and I think that are at least probably the easiest to understand are the coordinate structure constraint and this isn't an island and it's more of a constraint but I think it's interesting to include it here anyway so we can say something like I popcorn and drink what and that's fine because we know we ate popcorn but we're curious about what we drink so if we try to make a sentence out of it we could say something like
• 07:30 - 08:00 what did I eat and drink and that's fine because we're saying well I ate something and drank something so we're taking the object of both of these verbs that are coordinated and pulling it out what we can't do is we can't pull out just one of the objects so we can't say what did I eat popcorn and drink so why is this well this is a coordinating structure so this whole thing is a VP and inside each VP we have another VP
• 08:00 - 08:30 which is coordinated with and so when we turn this into a WH word if we're going to extract the objects from both or if we're going to extract the object at all we have to extract the objects from both so we have to remove the popcorn and whatever they drink turn them into WH words and move them both out we cannot just move one of them out otherwise because something that sounds ungrammatical what does I eat popcorn
• 08:30 - 09:00 and drink that's not okay because we're expecting that what to be the object of both of these VP's that are coordinated together so that's my little video on Islands I know there weren't too many trees here I think the trees at this point kind of self-explanatory you could draw them on your own and really just identifying them from sentences and strings is usually a better way to look
• 09:00 - 09:30 at these islands especially because if you have to draw a full tree for each of these sentences to determine whether it's an island or not that takes a lot of time when really we can just take a look at the sentence structure and what it's doing so in this case we have a coordinating constructor so when we see that one of these objects to remove but not the other what we can explain so now there's some coordinate structure constraining and when we don't move both objects there is a violation or for
• 09:30 - 10:00 instance in the complex DP islands if we just analyze the string of the sentence we see oh there's the CP inside of the CP therefore we can move this wh forward okay if you have any questions please leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them