Extraction in L2 English: Are factive verbs all alike?
Extraction in L2 English: Are factive verbs all alike?

Summary/Abstract: Factive verbs are traditionally said to induce weak island effects, banning the extraction of adjuncts, but not that of arguments, out of their post-verbal clause. However, many studies in the literature (Karttunen 1971, Hooper & Thompson 1973, Djarv 2019) show that not all factive verbs are alike and distinguish between emotive factives (true factives) and cognitive factives (semi-factives). These two sub-classes evince different syntactic behaviour, cognitive factives being seen as more permissive. With such verbs, event adjunct extraction is reported to be allowed, in some cases (Djarv & Romero 2021). The aim of this paper is to test the availability of adjunct extraction in L2 English. Testing native speakers of Romanian, at an intermediate and advanced level of English, I show that the extraction of adjuncts out of the post-verbal clause of a factive verb is banned in L2, irrespective of predicate type or proficiency level.

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