questions - 2025 Penn Bowl

Question

A syntactic island is a linguistic location that blocks movement processes occurring, making the sentence “Guess who John saw Harry and?” ungrammatical. For 10 points each:

[10e] Name this type of sentence, which is affected in the most common example of syntactic islands in English. One type of this kind of sentence is named for wh-words (“w-h-words”), while another is named for yes and no.

ANSWER: questions [or interrogative sentences; or interrogative clauses; accept yes-no questions or wh-questions]

[10h] This linguist discovered and named syntactic islands. This University of North Texas syntactician, who died in 2025, also popularized the squib as a short article format.

ANSWER: John Robert Ross [or Haj (“HODGE”) Ross]

[10m] This linguistic argument is supported by child speech obeying syntactic islands, despite them being rare in the input. This argument for universal grammar claims that the input is insufficient without innate linguistic knowledge.

ANSWER: poverty of the stimulus [prompt on Plato’s problem]

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Summary


2025 Penn Bowl - BU	11/01/25	Y	4	10.00	75%	25%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - CWRU	11/01/25	Y	3	16.67	100%	67%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - Mainsite (UPenn)	11/01/25	Y	6	11.67	67%	50%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - Murray State	11/08/25	Y	2	10.00	100%	0%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - Northwestern	10/25/25	Y	4	10.00	75%	25%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - Online	11/08/25	Y	2	20.00	100%	100%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - Ottawa	11/01/25	Y	7	11.43	86%	29%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - Stanford	10/25/25	Y	4	15.00	100%	50%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - UK	11/01/25	Y	9	13.33	89%	33%	11%
2025 Penn Bowl - UNC	11/01/25	Y	3	13.33	100%	33%	0%
2025 Penn Bowl - WashU	11/01/25	Y	2	5.00	50%	0%	0%

Data


I've been running into you in my lead plumbocene what could have benzene	MIT A	10	0	0	10
MIT B	Brandeis	10	0	0	10
RIT	Brown	0	0	10	10
Yale	Harvard	10	0	0	10
Ohio State A	CWRU	10	0	10	20
Michigan A	Michigan B	10	0	10	20
Ohio State B	Michigan C	10	0	0	10
JHU B	Columbia A	0	0	0	0
Columbia B	John Jay	10	0	10	20
Maryland C	Maryland A	0	0	10	10
Maryland B	NYU A	10	0	10	20
Mount Sinai	NYU B	10	0	0	10
JHU A	Swarthmore	10	0	0	10
Texas B	Central Oklahoma	10	0	0	10
Northwestern A	Illinois	10	0	10	20
UChicago C	Northwestern B	10	0	0	10
UChicago B	Purdue A	10	0	0	10
Indiana	Purdue B	0	0	0	0
New Young Whigs of America	abg academy	10	0	10	20
rusty shackleford	Wake Up Paddington A Washington Mystery	10	0	10	20
Toronto Murder on the Rider Express	McGill Fartlets	0	0	0	0
Toronto Sunshine Bubbles	Queen's is monitoring the situation	10	0	0	10
Toronto Operation PBSuccess	Carleton A	10	0	0	10
Toronto G	Waterloo you are crooked	10	0	10	20
#OpenToBuzz	Toronto E	10	0	10	20
Aweille Kevin Fan osti continue comme ça	Guelph perfomative male competition	10	0	0	10
Ottawa 67s	McGill B	10	0	0	10
Stanford B	Berkeley A	10	0	0	10
Berkeley B	The best time to buzz was twenty clues ago. The second best time to buzz is now	10	0	10	20
Free Win	Stanford A	10	0	0	10
In Search of Lost Clues	Berkeley C	10	0	10	20
Oklahoma	Texas A	10	0	0	10
Burnaburiash's Lapis Lazuli	To buzz is to be perceived	10	0	0	10
Coughing Baby	Quiztian Bale in Ratman Begins	10	0	0	10
Alas poor Warwick, I knew him Edinburgh	Hail to the Sheaf	10	0	10	20
Knorr Stock Clue	Chimp Brisket	10	10	10	30
Bristold	Of Mice and Penn	10	0	0	10
Penn and the Art of Tossup-Bonus cycle Maintenance	Washed Scrubs	0	0	0	0
The Bit and the Penndulum	Paul Quifford, or, It Was a Dark and Stormy Tournament	10	0	0	10
Galactic Ombudsmen	question mark	10	0	10	20
why is it called a score clue if nobody scores points on it	1. Wawa 2. Blank Street 151. Black Sheep at Kings Cross rail	10	0	0	10
Planck Sinatra	UNC A	10	0	10	20
Wise Duke	VT B	10	0	0	10
Truman State	VJ Edgecombe School of Interior Design - Edwardsville	0	0	0	0
WashU Bouba	WashU Kiki	10	0	0	10
UNC B	VT A	10	0	0	10