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« Kie Zuraw Lecture | Main | The World Atlas of Language Structures Online»

Maria Polinsky Colloquium

Maria Polinsky
Harvard

Covert A-movement: Backward raising and beyond

Friday, May 2, 3:30 pm, Machmer W-26

Abstract

This paper explores covert A-movement in several languages (Adyghe, Russian, Greek, and Romanian) proposes the distinction between true and apparent covert A-movement. The existence of covert A-movement has important implications for the analysis of A-movement within formal grammar. First, covert movement cannot be modeled using long-distance Agree alone (as suggested in Chomsky 2000). Backward Raising shows that, in some cases, the moving XP has a genuine syntactic presence in the higher position that cannot be accounted for with just an Agree relation. Agree and covert movement must be kept distinct. Second, Backward Raising shows that Lasnik's (1999) claim that A-movement does not leave copies cannot be correct since an actual copy of A-movement is pronounced in Backward Raising which instantiates covert A-movement. However, covert A-movement is sufficiently rare and an explanation of why this may be the case is still outstanding.