Abstract This study replicates Felser and Roberts (2007), which used a cross-modal picture priming task to examine indirect-object dependency processing in classroom L2 learners. The replication focuses on early learners with extensive naturalistic exposure (n = 22)—an understudied group the literature—and investigates whether these learners, contrast those original study, reactivate moved elem...

This paper focuses on wh-in-situ phenomena under phase-based approach and discusses the asymmetry between wh-arguments and wh-adjuncts in Mandarin Chinese. Wh-adjuncts, contrary to wh-arguments, are considered to be operators and must undergo movement so that the wh-island effects in this case can be explained. This paper attributes the subjacency effect to the locality requirement of wh-adjunc...

We develop a uniform analysis of single-wh and multiple-wh questions couched in dynamic inquisitive semantics. The captures the effects number marking on which-phrases, derives both mention-some mention-all readings as well an often neglected partial reading questions.

BACKGROUND The computational grammatical complexity (CGC) hypothesis claims that children with G(rammatical)-specific language impairment (SLI) have a domain-specific deficit in the computational system affecting syntactic dependencies involving 'movement'. One type of such syntactic dependencies is filler-gap dependencies. In contrast, the Generalized Slowing Hypothesis claims that SLI childre...

This article provides an overview of the issues and proposals surrounding wh-insitu since the 1980s. In particular, it discusses the question of whether or not in-situ wh-phrases undergo covert wh-movement. Aside from reviewing the basic arguments for and against covert wh-movement, it considers alternative proposals put forth, ranging from movement of elements other than wh-phrases themselves,...

Recent work identifies two properties that appear particularly relevant to the characterization of graph-based dependency models of syntactic structure: the absence of interleaving substructures (well-nestedness) and a bound on a type of discontinuity (gap-degree ≤ 1) successfully describe more than 99% of the structures in two dependency treebanks (Kuhlmann and Nivre 2006). Bodirsky et al. (20...

Mandarin Chinese WH-questions exhibit two syntactically interesting characteristics. First, WH-words that bear interrogative information always occur in situ. Second, in spite the above fact, I find that Mandarin WH-questions, with bounded WH-words, share the grammatical behaviors common to questions with unbounded and dislocated WH-words in other languages. Hence, intuitively, an account of Ma...

This paper investigates how exhaustivity in single and multiple wh-questions is acquired in German-speaking children with SLI. Comparing semantic and pragmatic accounts of exhaustivity, obligatory exhaustivity of multiple wh-questions is argued to be problematic for pragmatic approaches. Thus, a unified semantic approach is suggested$chosen that relates exhaustivity to an inherent property of t...