{"pk":49265,"title":"Islands Result from Clash of Functions: Single-conjunct Wh-Qs","subtitle":null,"abstract":"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.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Linguistics; Psychology; Discourse; Event cognition; Pragmatics; Survey"}],"section":"Papers with Oral Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1nj0n556","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Abigail","middle_name":"","last_name":"Fergus","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""},{"first_name":"Arielle","middle_name":"","last_name":"Belluck","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""},{"first_name":"Nicole","middle_name":"","last_name":"Cuneo","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""},{"first_name":"Adele","middle_name":"","last_name":"Goldberg","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49265/galley/37226/download/"}]}