Phases: An essay on cyclicity in syntax

Description

The minimalist notion of a phase has often been investigated with a view to the interfaces. ‘Phases’ provides a strictly syntax-internal perspective. If phases are fundamental, they should provide the grounds for a unifying treatment of different syntactic phenomena. Concentrating on displacement, the book argues that this expectation is borne out: there is an empirical clustering of properties, whereby the phrases that undergo pied-piping are also the phrases that host intermediate traces of cyclic movement. The same phrases also host partial and secondary movement. Finally, the immediate complements within these phrases never strand the embedding heads. The phrases that show this behaviour are the phases (CP, vP, DP, and PP). To account for the cluster of properties, phases are claimed to have two special properties: their complement is inaccessible to operations outside, the Phase Impenetrability Condition; their heads may be endowed with unvalued features that are neither connected to the categorical status of the phase nor interpreted on it. It is shown how the cluster of empirical properties flows naturally from these two assumptions, supporting the idea that phases are indeed a fundamental construct in syntax. List of glosses used 1 Introduction 1.1 Overview 1.2 Theoretical sketch 2 On successive-cyclic movement 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Are movement paths punctuated or uniform? 2.2.1 What constitutes a valid argument for punctuated paths? 2.2.2 Proposed evidence for punctuated paths (Abels 2003c) 2.2.3 Reconstruction in Norwegian 2.2.4 Evidence from ellipsis 2.2.5 Parasitic gaps (Nissenbaum, 2001) 2.2.6 A point of logic: Condition C and scope for binding 2.2.7 Conclusion 2.3 The edge of CP as a landing site of successive-cyclic movement 2.4 Reflection 3 Some properties of movement 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Partial movement 3.3 Pied-piping 3.4 Secondary movement 3.5 Reflection 4 The theory of cyclicity and phases 4.1 Configurations for feature-sharing 4.2 Movement and last resort 4.3 Phase impenetrability 4.3.1 Phases and sub-numerations 4.3.2 Phase impenetrability and islands 4.3.3 The stranding generalization 4.4 Phase heads and their features 4.4.1 Implementing successive cyclicity 4.4.2 Morphological parameterization 4.4.3 Extraction in Austronesian 5 Feature Values and Interpretation 5.1 Feature interpretation 5.2 Towards a precise formulation 5.3 Possible systems based on a single feature: A dry run 5.3.1 [uF↓] probes 5.3.2 [uF↓↑] probes 5.3.3 [uF↑] probes 5.4 The generalizations 5.4.1 Partial Movement 5.4.2 Pied-piping and secondary movement 5.5 Wh-movement in various languages 5.5.1 Single-Wh-movement languages: English, French, Italian 5.5.2 Multiple-Wh-fronting languages 5.5.3 Wh-in-situ 5.6 Summary 6 The phase heads v, C, P and the stranding generalization 6.1 VP immobility under v 6.1.1 VPs are mobile 6.1.2 VPs do not strand v 6.2 TP immobility under C 6.2.1 TPs do not strand C 6.2.2 TPs are mobile 6.2.3 The ban on C-stranding, word order, and cartography 6.2.4 Is there long TP movement? 6.3 DP immobility under P 6.3.1 PP pied-piping 6.3.2 Subextraction 6.4 Conclusion 7 On adposition stranding 7.1 Trace or null resumptive? 7.2 P-stranding in German and Dutch 7.2.1 R-words are not pronouns 7.2.2 R-words are not complements of P 7.2.3 So what are R-words? And where? 7.3 P-stranding languages 7.3.1 Special clitics as the complement of adpositions 7.3.2 Was für split 7.3.3 Adposition stranding and D-to-P incorporation 7.3.4 The pseudo passive 7.3.5 Adposition stranding and verbal particles 7.3.6 Implications 7.4 Conclusion 8 Phases 9 Bibliography 10 Index