Islands and Barriers To Movement
Since it was first proposed, the theory of syntactic movement yielded a new field of research aiming at providing the filters that block certain types of movement, also called locality theory. Locality theory is interested in discerning the islands and barriers to movement. It strives to identify the categories and constellations that block movement from occurring. In other words, one wants to understand why certain attempts at movement fail, e.g.
-
- a. You think that Mary visited Peter before calling Fred.
- b. *Who do you think that Mary visited Peter before calling ___?
-
- a. Your picture of Fred was funny.
- b. *Who was your picture of ___ funny?
-
- a. You like Bill's ideas.
- b. *Whose do you like ___ ideas?
The b-sentences are now all disallowed due to locality constraints on movement. Adjuncts and subjects are islands that block movement, and left branches in NPs are barriers that prevent pre-noun modifiers from being extracted out of NPs.
Read more about this topic: Syntactic Movement
Famous quotes containing the words islands, barriers and/or movement:
“we are so many
and many within themselves
travel to far islands but no one
asks for their story....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Developing the muscles of the soul demands no competitive spirit, no killer instinct, although it may erect pain barriers that the spiritual athlete must crash through.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty.... Here was every sensuous curve of the “human figure divine” but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.”
—Edward Weston (1886–1958)