Subject gaps are not inherently worse than object gaps in islands: Experimental evidence unifying That-Trace Effects and Subject-Object Gap Asymmetries in Islands

doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/PYJV9

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A long-standing puzzle regards why gaps in subject position are more acceptable than gaps in object position in non-islands, but less acceptable than gaps in object position in islands. Attempts at explaining this asymmetry generally assume it reflects the same constraint that renders gaps after overt complementizers unacceptable -- the "that-trace" effect. There is, however, no a priori reason to believe these two phenomena should be unified. Here I present two high-powered acceptability judgment studies demonstrating that the gap position asymmetry only holds when confounded by the that-trace effect, supporting theoretical approaches like the ECP that unify the two phenomena.

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