Subject position and island effects in Spanish: Experimental evidence

Constructions that inhibit the formation of long-distance dependencies like wh-questions are known as islands. In Spanish, it has been claimed that pre-verbal subjects are islands but post-verbal subjects are not. Previous experiments have found robust evidence of island effects for pre-verbal Spanish subjects but have not tested the crucial question of subject position. We fill this gap, using a formal acceptability judgment experiment to compare extractions from pre-verbal subjects to those from post-verbal subjects, while holding all else as constant as possible. For pre-verbal subjects, we find a large island effect, while for post-verbal subjects we find a small effect, without a clear decrease for the violation condition. Examining individual variation, we observe that most participants consistently accept extraction from post-verbal position but not pre-verbal, and we observe no effects of working memory on judgments. We argue our findings indicate a contrast by position and broadly support a structural view of subject islands. We also address methodological and interpretative debates in experimental syntax regarding both the presence of an island effect and the source of that effect.