Ross (1967) observed that “island” structures like “Who do you think [NP the gift from__] prompted the rumor?” or “Who did you hear [NP the statement [S that the CEO promoted__]]?” are not acceptable, despite having what seem to be plausible meanings in some contexts. Ross (1967) and Chomsky (1973) hypothesized that the source of the unacceptability is in the syntax. Here, we summarize how theories of discourse, frequency, and memory from the literature might account for such effects. We suggest that there is only one island structure—a class of coordination islands—that is best explained by a syntactic/semantic constraint. We speculate that all other island structures are likely to be explained in terms of discourse, frequency, and memory.

中文翻译：

---

语言岛效应的结构、功能和加工视角

罗斯 (1967) 观察到“岛屿”结构，如“你认为谁 [NP the gift from__] 引发了谣言？” 或“你听到谁 [NP the statement [S that the CEO Promotion__]]？” 是不可接受的，尽管在某些情况下似乎具有合理的含义。Ross (1967) 和 Chomsky (1973) 假设不可接受性的根源在于句法。在这里，我们总结了文献中的话语、频率和记忆理论如何解释这种影响。我们建议只有一个岛结构——一类协调岛——最好用句法/语义约束来解释。我们推测所有其他岛屿结构都可能用话语、频率和记忆来解释。