On the nature of ATB-movement: insights from reflexes of movement
Doreen Georgi
April 2019 

This paper presents new empirical evidence for a particular version of the asymmetric approach to across-the-board (ATB) movement. The evidence comes from reflexes of movement, a diagnostic tool that has not been used so far in the ATB-literature. I investigate languages in which the reflex shows a morphological distinction between terminal and intermediate movement steps. The existing approaches of ATB make different predictions about the distribution of such reflexes across the conjuncts under long-distance ATB-movement. The data collected from 4 Niger-Congo languages provide evidence for asymmetric extraction from the 1st conjunct + a terminal movement step inside the 2nd conjunct. Furthermore, the observed asymmetry between long and short ATB-movement regarding the distribution of the reflexes (symmetric vs. asymmetric) is derived by the standard relativized minimality condition on syntactic operations, here on upward probing, combined with the assumption that PF-lowering also applies in an ATB-fashion.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/004570 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	To appear in Proceedings of NELS 49
keywords:	atb-movement, locality, terminal vs. intermediate movement steps, upward probing, morphology, syntax
Downloaded:	126 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]