This book is about one of the most intriguing features of human communication systems: the fact that words that go together in meaning can occur arbitrarily far away from each other. In the sentence This is technology that most people think about, but rarely consider the implications of, the word 'technology' is interpreted as if it were simultaneously next to the words 'about' and 'of'. This kind of long-distance dependency has been the subject of intense linguistic and psycholinguistic research for the last half century, and offers a unique insight into the nature of grammatical structures and their interaction with cognition. The constructions in which these unbounded dependencies arise are remarkably difficult to model and come with a rather puzzling array of constraints that have often defied characterization or proper explanation. This work provides a detailed survey of these constructions and the factors responsible for their creation and comprehension, describes new experimental evidence that sheds light on the nature of the phenomenon, and suggests new avenues for future research. The volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in the fields of morphosyntax, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science.

How do human languages transmit complex information about the properties of phrases over arbitrarily large structural distances? This fundamental and difficult question is raised by the phenomenon of extraction. Extraction has driven the devlopment of syntactic theory over the past three and a half decades. However, there has been no consensus on what form the connectivity mechanism should take. A number of recent, mutually incompatible theoretical approaches share the general view that extraction is not a unitary phenomenon. This monograph argues that when a broader range of data is considered, the supporting arguments of this view are radically undercut. Levine and Hukari conclude that the grammar of extraction connectivity is relatively simple, homogeneous with respect to construction type and uniform with respect to the position of the extractee. Book jacket.

The syntactical construction of questions and some relative clauses creates what linguists call unbounded dependencies. In a sentence like "What book are you reading?," the phrase "what book" occupies a special fronted position in the sentence, but is at the same time the object of the verb "reading" and would otherwise be expected to appear immediately following the verb. The relation between the fronted phrase and its grammatical function can cross an unlimited number of clause boundaries, hence the term unbounded dependency. Taking a variety of approaches, this collection offers the first volume exclusively devoted to the treatment of unbounded dependencies within the framework of lexical functional grammar.

This volume brings together cutting-edge experimental research from leaders in the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics to explore the nature of a phenomenon that has long been central to syntactic theory - 'island effects'. The chapters in this volume draw upon recent methodological advances in experimental methods in syntax, also known as 'experimental syntax', to investigate the underlying cognitive mechanisms that give rise to island effects. This volume presents a comprehensive empirical review of a contemporary debate in the field by including contributions from researchers representing a variety of points of view on the nature of island effects. This book is ideal for students and researchers interested in cutting-edge experimental techniques in linguistics, psycholinguistics and psychology.

Abstract: The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a lexical analysis of certain constructions that license unbounded dependencies in Korean. The term 'unbounded dependency' refers to the long-distance relationship holding between a gap and its coreferential element. We investigate four types of unbounded dependency constructions (UDCs): topic constructions, tough predicate constructions, double nominative constructions, and relative clause constructions. Over the last few decades, various syntactic approaches have been taken in order to explain the formation of these UDCs. In particular, grammarians in GB theory claim that UDCs involve movement processes language universally. However, as pointed out in previous literature, movement-based accounts for Korean UDCs are problematic because island constraints and bouding conditions for movement are frequently violated. As an alternative, some analyses propose that UDC gaps are not traces but null resumptive pronouns, pro s that involve semantic binding relations. In this dissertation, we argue that UDC gaps in Korean are traces that need to be handled at the level of syntax. We support our argument by showing how UDC gaps have unique properties. We discuss their semantic interpretations and strong crossover and coordination facts. In addition, we analyze overt pronouns and the reflexive 'caki' as sort of audible traces when they occur in a gap position in a UDC. We argue for three different kinds of UDC gaps in Korean: traces, resumptive pronouns, and resumptive reflexive 'caki'. In non-UDCs, these correspond respectively to pro, overt pronouns, and the long-distance reflexive 'caki'. Because these corresponding forms have the same semantic and pragmatic properties, UDC traces do form separate categories from their corresponding non-UDC forms. Without assuming any extra mechanism, we provide a simple UDC analysis using the nonlocal SLASH feature proposed by Pollard and Sag (1994). In HPSG, this SLASH feature can encompass the different lexical properties of traces, pronouns, and reflexive pronouns. Our theory investigates four kinds of Korean UDCs and provides lexical constraints and structural representations for each type. This study touches on various issues, including filler-gap dependencies, argument realization, morphosyntactic combinations, and multi-level interfaces (syntax-semantic-pragmatics), which are crucial parts of a speaker's unconscious knowledge of linguistics.