Left Branch Extraction in Lower Sorbian

Abstract

Corver (1990) and Bošković (2005) note that the availability of Left Branch Extraction – the extraction of material to the left of the head out of DPs, APs, and PPs – in a language correlates with the presence and absence of definite articles. Languages with definite articles do not allow Left Branch Extraction (like English), languages without definite articles do allow Left Branch Extraction (like Polish). They further suggest that the two phenomena are causally linked, claiming Left Branch Extraction in languages with definite articles is blocked by the DP projection. In this paper, I show that the presence of definite articles does not imply the absence of Left Branch Extraction. The evidence comes from Lower Sorbian, an endangered Slavic language spoken in South East Germany. I show that Lower Sorbian has both definite articles and Left Branch Extraction.