Parasitic gaps aren’t parasitic, or, the case of the Uninvited Guest

Abstract A parasitic gap construction typically occurs when an otherwise illicit gap in an island is ameliorated by a gap elsewhere in the sentence. In this paper, we consider the relationship between the unacceptability of extraction from subject islands (ExtrSubj) and the amelioration associated with parasitic gaps. We argue that there is no parasitic gap mechanism per se that has the effect of making extraction from an island grammatical. Rather, the link between the two is a matter of processing complexity. Our central claim is that in ExtrSubj, the presence of a distinct referring argument in the predicate contributes processing complexity. This referring argument is the ‘Uninvited Guest’. If an instance of ExtrSubj is of reduced acceptability, inclusion of the Uninvited Guest is likely to make it fully unacceptable, or ‘ungrammatical’ in conventional terms. On the other hand, linking of the argument position to the extracted A′ constituent – a ‘parasitic gap’ configuration – does not contribute additional processing complexity, thus giving rise to the appearance of amelioration.