Recent Advances in Research on Island Phenomena

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to submit a manuscript for a Special Issue of Languages titled “Recent Advances in Research on Island Phenomena”.

In natural languages, syntactic elements can, in principle, be linked across an unbounded distance, as exemplified by filler-gap dependencies. Since Ross (1967), the term “island” has been used to describe syntactic structures from which extraction is impossible or impeded, and the constraints on such dependencies are typically assumed to be universal and innate, given the lack of negative evidence during language acquisition.

English has been the prototypical object of study in accounts trying to establish what is possible and impossible with respect to, e.g., long-distance dependencies across clausal boundaries. While research on English has thus been ubiquitous in the literature on island structures, attested counterexamples in the Mainland Scandinavian languages, first identified in the 1970s (Erteschik-Shir 1973; Engdahl & Ejerhed 1982), have continuously been dismissed as illusory and alternative accounts for the underlying structure of such cases have been proposed (Chomsky 1982; Kush, Omaki & Hornstein 2013). In view of the fact that island structures are pervasive in spoken Mainland Scandinavian (Lindahl 2017; Nyvad, Christensen & Vikner 2017), these languages have not been given the attention that they deserve in the syntax literature. In addition, recent research suggests that extraction from certain types of island structures in English might not be as unacceptable as previously assumed either (Müller 2019; Chaves & Putnam 2020). These findings break new empirical ground, question perceived knowledge, and may indeed have substantial ramifications for syntactic theory.

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of the state of the art in research on island phenomena in English and the Mainland Scandinavian languages, as well any other languages where such island structures can be found. An explicit objective is to investigate how other languages compare to English with respect to island constraints in order to shed light on the nature of the constraints on filler-gap dependencies and the syntactic primitives that form the basis of such structures. This Special Issue will offer both new and updated analyses of island phenomena, and we welcome contributions from all island researchers, irrespective of theoretical framework.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Relative clause extraction
• Complex NP extraction
• Adjunct clause extraction
• Wh-islands
• Subject islands
• The nature of island constraints in L2
• Satiation effects and graded acceptability
• The role of dependency type in extraction phenomena

Squib-like articles (no longer than 5000 words) are also welcome. Individual contributions may range from descriptive to formal and experimental approaches.

We request that, prior to submitting a full manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and abstract of approximately 400–600 words, summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to both the Guest Editors, Anne Mette Nyvad (amn@cc.au.dk) and Ken Ramshøj Christensen (krc@cc.au.dk), as well as to the Languages Editorial Office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

The tentative completion schedule is as follows:

• Abstract submission deadline: August 31, 2021
• Notification of abstract acceptance: September 30, 2021
• Proposed deadline: June 30, 2022

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

Chaves, R. P. & Putnam, M. T. (2020). Unbounded Dependency Constructions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, N. (1982). Conditions on transformations.  In S. Anderson & P. Kiparsky (Eds.), A festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston.

Engdahl, E. & Ejerhed, E. (1982). Readings on unbounded dependencies in Scandinavian languages. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International.

Erteschik-Shir, N. (1973). On the nature of island constraints. PhD dissertation, MIT.

Kush, D., Omaki, A., & Hornstein, N. (2013). Microvariation in Islands? In J. Sprouse & N. Hornstein (Eds.), Experimental Syntax and Island Effects, 239–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139035309.013.

Lindahl, F. (2017). Extraction from relative clauses in Swedish. PhD dissertation, University of Gothenburg.  

Müller, C. (2019). Permeable Islands: A Contrastive Study of Swedish and English Adjunct Clause Extraction. PhD dissertation, University of Lund.

Nyvad, A. M., Christensen, K. R. & Vikner, S. (2017). ”CP-Recursion in Danish: A cP/CP-Analysis. The Linguistic Review, 34(3), 449-477.

Ross, J. R. (1967). Constraints on variables in syntax. PhD dissertation, MIT.

Dr. Anne Mette Nyvad
Dr. Ken Ramshøj Christensen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registeringand logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.