Lee Jae-choel. 1997. Island Sensitivity. Studies in Modern Grammatical Theories 11: 39-56. The purpose of the paper is to explain island phenomena in terms of Fewest Steps without barriers. If the barriers system is introduced in order to explain island phenomena, the types of barriers can not be integrated. As the notion of government is eliminated in the framework of Minimalist Program, the barriers system should be removed. The paper adopts the Oka(1995)`s assumption that the asymmetry of argument and adjunct extraction from islands are attributed to the difference of thematic relation between arguments and adjuncts. Arguments are rather closely associated to lexical heads and must appear in the positions required by them. But adjuncts semantically function as modifiers of something, and rather freely appear anywhere and modify something in a certain configuration. This paper adopts the economy condition on derivation as following.; A derivation is blocked by a competing one with fewer steps. We assume the a referential wh-phrase and a non-referential wh-phrase respectively have a different structure on head D. If a wh-phrase receives a referential interpretation, the head D is assigned wh-feature and forms operator-argument variable chain. The derivation starting within islands does not have another derivation experiencing fewer steps that start outside islands. So, the extractions of referential wh-phrases from islands obey the economy condition. But if a wh-phrase receives a non-referential interpretation, modifier, not head D, is assigned wh-feature and forms operator-modifier variable chain in logical form. The derivation starting within islands has another derivation experiencing fewer steps that start outside islands. So, the extractions of non-referential wh-phrase from islands violate the economy condition. If NP is a modifier of D in DP structure, NP-modifier and adjunct belong to modifier types which can not be extracted from strong islands such as subject island, adjunct island and relative clause island. If argument is extracted from weak islands, it is assigned referential interpretation, and operator-argument variable chain on head D is form at LF. But If adjunct is extracted from weak islands, operator-modifier variable chain is formed on it.

• 이재철 | Jae Chul Lee