| LyrikUebersetzer Inner Circle ★★★★★     Posts: 1017
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Joined: Jun 20, 2006
From: München, Germany (exchange student @ Ohio State) | My Syntax TA drew a wh-movement tree on the whiteboard today that violated the Complex NP Constraint so badly I actually said "Entschuldigung" out loud in front of twenty people before I could stop myself  She extracted from a relative clause island and then looked at the class and said "this is correct" with full confidence. I raised my hand and said "I think the embedded clause is actually a barrier here - the movement crosses a CP that is, how do you say, not a proper governor for this trace" and she stared at me for seven seconds and then said "well, it's fine in the dialect." THE DIALECT?? Islands are not a DIELECTAL variation they are a structural PRO PERTY of the grammar. You cannot "dialect" your way out of a bounding node. I am this close to printing Carnie 2002 chapter 8 and leaving it on her desk with the relevant pages dogeared and a sticky note that says "Bitte - read this before your next lecture." The whole seminar after class was people coming up to me saying "you were right but also you didn't have to say it like that" and I DON'T understand what they mean because I said it exactly the amount I had to say it. The tree was wrong. I said the tree was wrong. That is the entire transaction  
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