Authors: David Potter and Katy Carlson
Contact Email(s): davidkpotter@gmail.com, k.carlson@moreheadstate.edu
One thought on “The structural source of English Subject Islands”
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Interesting talk, tank you. However, this work assumes that ellipsis involves covert structure. This is one possible analysis, yes, but by no means uncontroversial or the only option on the market.
There are various accounts of sprouting, sluices, and fragment answers that do not involve covert/elided structure. A small list is Tanenhaus and Carlson, (1990), Hardt (1999), Ginzburg and Sag, (2000), Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), Jacobson (2008), Sag and Nykiel (2011), Kertz, (2013), Martin and McElree (2008, 2009, 2011), Miller and Pullum (2013). More recent examples exist.
If such accounts are correct, finding no island effect in the constructions you analyzed tells us nothing about syntactic islands. Again, I liked the study, but the stated conclusions don’t follow from the results.