This chapter deals with the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) approach to extraction restrictions, or island constraints. The cross-linguistic and language-internal (i.e. cross-constructional) variation in extraction restrictions is captured in RRG in terms of how deeply into sentence structure assertion may be represented. Some languages allow the potential focus domain to reach individual constituents in both complement and adverbial subordinate clauses, with consequences on the extractability of such constituents. One such case is Japanese, a more permissive language than English, which provides the main case study discussed in the chapter.

This chapter focuses on experimental psycholinguistic techniques that tap into real-time sentence processing by measuring moment-by-moment reading times or eye-gaze patterns. Data recorded during real-time reading or listening can provide implicit measures of grammatical sensitivity and are a valuable source of evidence for grammatical distinctions, operations, and constraints proposed within the theoretical linguistic literature. A selective review of recent reading-time and eye-movement monitoring studies illustrates how these techniques can help us investigate theoretical linguistic issues and hypotheses, and provide insights into the nature of syntactic derivations and representations. Charting comprehenders' sentence processing profiles over time can help reveal the sources of unacceptability and of grammatical illusions, the point in time at which grammatical violations are detected, the point in time at which grammatical constraints are applied, and can also reveal processing reflexes of a sentence's derivational history.

This chapter surveys experimental studies of Germanic languages other than English, including the Scandinavian languages, Dutch, and German. Experimental investigations of the syntax of these languages are mainly of two types. The first type concerns syntactic phenomena that are found both in English and the other Germanic languages. Several phenomena of this type are reviewed in this chapter, including island constraints, the that-trace effect, and superiority. With regard to these phenomena, the major question has been whether syntactic constraints apply in the same way across the Germanic languages, as would be expected given the close relatedness of the Germanic languages. The second type of experimental syntactic research reviewed in this chapter is concerned with syntactic phenomena that are only found in the non-English Germanic languages. These include word-order alternations related to the verb-second property of the non-English Germanic languages and the less rigid word order of the Germanic SOV languages.

Island effects are one of the most studied phenomena in experimental syntax. There are at least two reasons for this. First, they are a terrific case study for a number of foundational questions in linguistics, covering topics such as the complexity of the grammar, the variation of languages, the dynamics of sentences processing, and the acquisition of abstract constraints. Second, they are a valuable case study for illustrating the benefits of formal experiments, such as defining an effect, isolating the source of an effect, and increasing the precision of the empirical bases of linguistic theories. In this chapter, we illustrate these benefits of formal experiments for island effects by reviewing the major empirical contributions that formal experiments have made to theories of island effects over the past two decades. Along the way, we also provide a relatively comprehensive list of articles that have used formal experiments to explore island effects.

Formal acceptability experiments are particularly important for languages with smaller communities of linguists, including most Semitic languages. However, experimental studies of sentence acceptability in this language family are still rare, and focus on very few phenomena (notably wh-dependencies) and languages (mostly Arabic and Hebrew). This chapter reviews the extant literature on acceptability studies in Semitic languages. Special attention is given to studies on island constraints, resumptive pronouns – a conspicuous feature of Semitic –and their interaction, revealing a complex pattern of results. The scant literature on agreement and ditransitive structures is also discussed. The review also highlights some unexplored topics in Semitic syntax, which will benefit from future experimental work, including free word order, verbless sentences, and construct states. Finally, the chapter outlines some of the challenges facing researchers conducting experimental work in Semitic, including issues of diglossia, as well as technical challenges relating to script, online databases, and participant recruitment.