TITLE: Sources of meaning-driven unacceptability 

ABSTRACT: Within formal semantics, it is increasingly common to assume that constructions having systematically trivial semantic content (typically in the sense of Gajewski, 2002; 2009) are in virtue of this perceived as ungrammatical, on a par with syntactically ill-formed constructions. In this talk, I explore to the extent to which such systematic semantic triviality can explain various types of weak (a.k.a. selective) islands, in particular factive islands (Szabolcsi & Zwarts, 1993) and referential islands (Simonenko, 2016). Schwarz and Simonenko (2018) argue that (i) factive and referential island effects resist explanation in terms of systematic semantic triviality, and (ii) these effects instead give evidence that systematic pragmatic infelicity is a source of perceived ungrammaticality. I will argue against both claims, by showing that constructions with violations of factive or referential island constraints do in fact exhibit systematic semantic triviality. Systematic infelicity, on the other hand, seems to both under- and over-generate unacceptable constructions, and thereby fail to be explanatory wrt. weak islands. I conclude by noting a puzzle that seems to trouble all theories of factive islands currently on the market.

HK 2019