from a review...

[dmellow at sfu.ca]

I have always enjoyed these excerpts from Chomsky (1986: Barriers), pp. 46,
50.

Hence, on the assumptions we are now examining, the subject of an NP must be
regarded as falling in the category of adjuncts, not arguments, with regard
to the ECP.  This is not unreasonable. . . . The preceding discussion shows
that a variety of consequences flow from the assumption that subjects of
noun phrases can in principle be extracted by wh-movement but not over a
wh-island.  Unfortunately, the relevant facts do not appear to be very
sharp.	Further empirical evidence is required, but the logic of the
situation is rather clear.

The conclusion seems correct, though the facts are hardly crystal clear.


Cheers,

Dean


On Tue, 09 Apr 2002 22:00:59 -0700 sag at csli.stanford.edu wrote:
> FYI.
>
> This is from Mario Montalbetti's (LINGUIST List) review
> of Zagona (2002) The Syntax of Spanish:
>
> [...]
>
> A word to pre-empt inevitable attacks. It is very likely that the native
> speaker of Spanish will object to some grammaticality judgments. This is
> only natural, given the ample dialectal diversity in Spanish. To get stuck

> here would be a pity. First, because as Chomsky (1995) has pointed out in
> his (in)famous fn7 on p203, there is no grammaticality. And second,
because
> it would be yet another unfortunate case of not seeing the woods because
of
> the trees. In any case, I expect judgment differences throughout the book
> to be minimal.
>
> [...]
>
> Dang! So how do I evaluate it?...
>
> -Ivan