Islands

"Who did you see [a picture of ___]?" (The phrase is the object).

"*Who did [a picture of ___] hang on the wall?" (The phrase is the subject). Why Do Islands Exist? Islands

A occurs when the grammatical subject of a sentence acts as one of these barriers. In English, you can usually extract a word from the object of a sentence, but doing the same to the subject results in an ill-formed "island violation". "Who did you see [a picture of ___]

Many generative grammarians argue that islands are a result of the of human language. A occurs when the grammatical subject of a

Modern theories suggest certain phrases are "phases" that become invisible to the rest of the sentence once completed. 2. The Information Structure View

The second gap is inside an "island," but the first "licit" gap makes the whole sentence feel okay to a native speaker.