Competence-based theories of island effects play a central role in generative grammar, yet the graded nature of many syntactic islands has never been properly accounted for. Categorical syntactic accounts of island effects have persisted in spite of a wealth of data suggesting that island effects are not categorical in nature and that…

Presents an analysis of the constraints on pronominal anaphora in English within the framework of cognitive grammar in terms of semantic distinctions between pronouns and full noun phrases. Semantic notions of prominence and conceptual interconnection are used to develop a model of "conceptual reference points." The analysis provides problematic…