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Towards an Etiology of Adjunct Islands

Kyle Johnson

Abstract


This paper examines the connection between certain island phenomena for long distance movement, and matching island conditions on focus projection. Based on a description of focus projection that Lisa Selkirk and Michael Rochemont formulate, I take the basic pattern to be that pitch accent on a word may license focus marking on a phrase only if the pitch accented word is not separated from the focus marked phrase by a phrase in Specifier position or in adjunct position. Long distance movement operations are similarly incapable of moving a phrase out of a phrase in Specifier or adjunct position. Using Chomsky's notion of "phase," I argue that this is because Specifiers and adjuncts are phonological phases, and make proposals about what movement and focus projection is that thereby derives this effect. I then propose an interpretation of Chomsky's Bare Phrase Structure that derives the phaseness of these phrases.

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