Islands Result from Clash of Functions: Single-conjunct Wh-Qs

When we produce utterances, we aim to express our message in a coherent way. While listeners generally prefer semantically related constituents to be close together in the string ("local"), certain constructions allow long-distance dependencies (LLDs). There is growing evidence that constraints on LDDs involve information structure, but conjunction is recognized to require its own unique constraints. Here we offer 4 experimental studies aimed to illuminate why conjunctions resist LDDs, by investigating a particular case experimentally in detail: English wh-questions that query only the final conjunct in verb phrase conjunction. The first two studies demonstrate that gradient acceptability is predicted by the extent to which a conjunction expresses a single complex event rather than two separate events. Exp. 3 demonstrates a role for the information structure constraint that holds of LDDs generally: more prominent (less backgrounded) conjuncts combine with wh-questions more easily. A final experiment manipulates construal as a single event and the prominence of a conjunct. Results demonstrate an additive causal role for both factors.