Syntax Lunch: Akira Omaki & Chizuru Nakao
Pre-spell-out copy deletion
18 September, 1108B MMH, 12:30pm
Abstract
Although the copy theory of movement is widely adopted in the minimalist
framework, it has
sometimes been questioned whether every type of movement leaves a copy
behind. This paper
argues that head movement (HM) and rightward movement of a PP complement
(PP-shift) do not leave a
copy behind (i.e., the copy is deleted before Spell-Out and is not
visible at PF or LF: we will call it `copyless
movement'), and proposes a new generalization: movement is copy-less
when it targets a position
that does not c-command the base position. Adopting Nunes's analysis of
chain reduction, we argue
that our generalization follows from a principle that avoids a problem
with linearization of chains.