The Radical Unacceptability Hypothesis: Accounting for Unacceptability without Universal Constraints

The Radical Unacceptability Hypothesis (RUH) has been proposed as a way of explaining the unacceptability extraction from islands and frozen structures. This hypothesis explicitly assumes distinction between due to violations local well-formedness conditions—conditions on constituency, constituent order, morphological form—and extra-grammatical factors. We explore RUH with respect classical islands, extend it broader range phenomena, including freezing, A′ chain interactions, zero-relative clauses, topic weak crossover, subjects parasitic gaps, sensitivity information structure. picture that emerges is consistent RUH, suggests more generally otherwise well-formed configurations reflects non-syntactic factors, not principles grammar.