Authors: Savithry Namboodiripad, Felicia Bisnath, Alex Kramer, Noah Luntzlara and Adele Goldberg
Contact Email(s): savithry@umich.edu, fbisnath@umich.edu, arkram@umich.edu, nluntzla@umich.edu, adele@princeton.edu
2 thoughts on “Backgroundedness measures predict island status of non-finite adjuncts in English”
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very nice abstract, are you saying that (posterior) -ing adjuncts were rated lower than (purpose) to-adjuncts?
Who did the mechanic change classes to meet?
Who did the mechanic change classes after meeting?
Did you vary the semantic class of the adjunct? An -ing adjunct can express anteriority (Who did the mechanic change classes before meeting?) or manner (Who did the mechanic change classes without meeting?): without -ing adjuncts have been claimed by Truswell to allow for extraction
Thank you Anne! Yes, the -ing ones were rated lower overall, and that was a significant effect above and beyond our “same time” gradient measure of backgroundedness, but it was not for our negation test measure.
We counterbalanced before and after adjuncts, but we only used those two for this experiment. We didn’t find that there were any differences between before and after, but we’re about to look at more types of adjuncts, including “while” and “without” in the coming months! Adele is going to take the lead on that part!