Japanese/Korean Linguistics

Japanese relative clauses exhibit apparent island violations. Previous analyses have attributed this pattern either to base-generated resumptive pronouns in the extraction site or to extraction of the head noun from a broad subject position. This paper presents new evidence from reconstruction effects challenging the broad subject analysis. Three diagnostics—anaphor binding, variable binding, and Condition C—show that reconstruction into the variable site inside the island is systematically unavailable, whereas reconstruction into an intermediate position below the highest subject but above the island is obligatory. I argue that these facts follow if island-insensitive relative clauses are derived by mixed chains, in which a relative operator is base-generated in the highest specifier of vP, binds a resumptive pronoun inside the island, and subsequently undergoes movement. The proposal provides new evidence that Japanese relativization obligatorily involves movement in the upper portion of the A′-dependency chain despite its apparent island insensitivity.