Nominal copular sentences [DP V DP] can be distinguished in: canonical (1)
[DPsubject copula DPpredicate] and inverse [DPpredicate copula DPsubject](2)
[1].
(1) [DP_subj The picture of the wall]a is [SmallClause ta [DP_pred the
cause of the riot]].
(2) [DP_pred The cause of the riot]b is [Small Clause [DP_subj the picture
of the wall] tb]
The aim of this study is to test whether the extraction from the DP
predicate is really perceived as more acceptable (Moro 1997) than the
extraction from the DP subject and whether in inverse copular constructions
the extraction from the (raised) DP predicate is banned. In Italian, unlike
English, the copula always agrees
with the DP subject (even if the DP subject is postverbal). Our hypothesis
is that i) agreement with the DP subject (only in canonical sentences) and
ii) the argumental (i.e. subject) vs predicative status of the DPs from
which the wh- element is extracted should influence both the online and the
offline performance of native Italian speakers. An Acceptability Judgement
Task (AJT) and a Self-Paced Reading (SPR) experiment with a Sentence
Comprehension Task were conducted.results show that copular type (Canonical
vs Inverse) plays a role both in acceptability (higher acceptability for
canonical) and RTs (higher reading times at the verb region for Inverse),
while the extraction site (predicate vs subject) has a clear effect in the
comprehension of the sentence, accuracy is higher for extraction from
predicates.