Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
Cognition. 2023 Nov;240:105563. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105563. Epub 2023 Aug 5.
Each grammatical construction serves a function, such as conveying that part an utterance is at-issue or is backgrounded. When multiple constructions combine to produce an utterance, their functions must be compatible. This preregistered study (N = 680) addresses the enigmatic case of "syntactic island constraints": Long-distance dependency constructions (LDDs) do not combine equally well with all base constructions. While widely presumed to require unlearned syntactic constraints, we test the idea that it is infelicitous to make an element both prominent (via an LDD construction) and backgrounded (via the base construction). Using 10 base constructions of English (144 base stimuli), results confirm two independent measures of backgroundedness strongly correlate with acceptability ratings on each of three LDD constructions. Results indicate that "island" constraints arise from a clash between the functions of the constructions being combined.
每种语法结构都有其功能，例如传达话语的某个部分是在争议中还是被背景化。当多个结构结合产生一个话语时，它们的功能必须是兼容的。这项预先注册的研究（N=680）解决了“句法岛约束”的谜案：远距离依赖结构（LDD）与所有基本结构结合得并不一样好。虽然人们普遍认为需要非学习的句法约束，但我们检验了这样一种观点，即一个元素既突出（通过 LDD 结构）又背景化（通过基本结构）是不合适的。使用英语的 10 种基本结构（144 个基本刺激），结果证实，两种独立的背景化度量与三个 LDD 结构上的可接受性评分都有很强的相关性。结果表明，“岛”约束是由组合结构的功能冲突引起的。
