Linguists debate whether these "walls" are built into our mental grammar or caused by how we process information. 1. The Architectural View
Modern theories suggest certain phrases are "phases" that become invisible to the rest of the sentence once completed. 2. The Information Structure View
"*Who did [a picture of ___] hang on the wall?" (The phrase is the subject). Why Do Islands Exist? Islands
The second gap is inside an "island," but the first "licit" gap makes the whole sentence feel okay to a native speaker.
Once a subject moves to its final position, its internal structure is "frozen" and cannot be accessed. Linguists debate whether these "walls" are built into
Some researchers suggest the problem isn't grammar, but .
A occurs when the grammatical subject of a sentence acts as one of these barriers. In English, you can usually extract a word from the object of a sentence, but doing the same to the subject results in an ill-formed "island violation". The second gap is inside an "island," but
Extracting from a subject might simply be too mentally taxing for the brain to process in real-time. Exceptions and "Parasitic" Gaps