Some Purported Problems for the Movement Theory of Control

Drummond, Alex; Hornstein, Norbert

doi:10.1162/ling_a_00162

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…The argumentation by Drummond & Hornstein (2014) outlined above provides one important insight: for the MTC, whether an adjunct is created by external merge or by internal merge (i.e. by movement) is of crucial importance.…”

Section: Predictions By the Mtcmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So far, so good; up to this point the MTC seems to be ideally suited to a local derivational approach to control. However, as Drummond & Hornstein (2014) have pointed out, successive-cyclic movement from phase edge to phase edge undermines the MTC-based account of why control into adjuncts is possible in examples like (33-a), whereas wh-extraction out of adjuncts is not (see (33-b)). The MTC accounts for this contrast in grammaticality as follows: (32-a) can be derived via sideward movement, as the adjunction site (adjunction to vP) is above the target of sideward movement (=Specv).…”

Section: (I)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As regards the site of adjunction, Drummond & Hornstein (2014) point out that "the relevant class of adjuncts must adjoin below C" (Drummond & Hornstein 2014: 451); so if wh-movement directly targets SpecC, the ungrammaticality of (32-b) follows. However, any intermediate landing site for wh-phrases below SpecC would undermine the finding of (32-b)'s ungrammaticality.…”

Section: (I)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…also Drummond & Hornstein 2014). Moreover, if we take seriously the notion that islands impose restrictions on syntactic movement, the idea that movement takes place all the way up to the controller's position (as suggested by the MTC) might be too radical given that obligatory control is possible into (certain types of) islands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Locality, control, and non-adjoined islands

Fischer

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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The goal of this paper is twofold: empirically, it is shown that obligatory control (OC) into islands is not restricted to control into certain adjuncts, but can also involve non-adjoined islands. This poses a serious problem for the movement theory of control (MTC), whose analysis of OC into adjuncts crucially relies on the fact that adjunction is involved.Second, the paper seeks to explore to what extent control theory is compatible with phase theory based on a strict version of the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC). In order to reconcile these locality considerations with the observed control patterns in the context of islands, the paper assumes a moderately local relationship between controller and controllee. The basic idea of the proposed theory is that the controllee starts out as an empty argument which needs to be referentially identified under Agree. To this end, it moves from phase edge to phase edge (in accordance with the PIC) until it can be licensed by the controller.In contrast to the MTC, the target position of controllee movement is not the controller position itself; thus, control into islands (including non-adjoined islands) can be derived more easily, since the control relation can already be established when the controller is at the edge of the highest phase inside the island and the controller is merged in the next higher phase. Hence, the theory is compatible with phase theory and can in particular account for the observed control patterns involving adjoined and non-adjoined islands.

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Section: Predictions By the Mtcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (I)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (I)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Locality, control, and non-adjoined islands

Fischer

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…For other criticisms of the MTC, seeLandau (2003;, andBobaljik & Landau (2009). But seeBoeckx, Hornstein & Nunes (2010b) andDrummond & Hornstein (2014) for replies.18 This idea is similar to a proposal fromReinhart (1983), which states that if the same meaning can be expressed using either a bound variable or a free pronoun, the bound variable will be preferred by both speakers and hearers. SeeLasnik (1991);Heim (1998;Fox (2000);Reinhart (2006);Roelofsen (2008); Drummond (2011); a.o., for alternative theories and discussions on problems withReinhart's (1983) proposal.…”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

A movement theory of adjunct control

Green

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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It has recently been argued (Landau 2017) that control in temporal and rationale adjuncts may be either syntactic ‘Obligatory Control’ (OC) or non-syntactic ‘Non-Obligatory Control’ (NOC), in contrast to previous assumptions that adjunct control is strictly OC. Here I demonstrate that this OC/NOC duality does not extend to all adjuncts. I outline claims that Landau would have to make in order to accommodate the wider distribution of OC and NOC in adjuncts, but argue that the account still struggles. I offer an alternative within the Movement Theory of Control.

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Control Phenomena

Potsdam

Haddad

2017

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition

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Control phenomena have been at the center of syntactic theorizing almost since the inception of generative grammar. To first approximation, control is an interpretive dependency between two arguments: a lexicalized noun phrase (the controller) and a null argument in a dependent clause (the controllee), as in Sandy hopes [ ∅ to succeed] . The primary concerns of syntactic theories have been accounting for various characteristics of the null controllee and the identification of its controller. This chapter surveys some of the phenomena that have driven our current understanding of these issues. Within the domain of obligatory control, some phenomena speak to the controller: the behavior of polyadic predicates, implicit control, variable control and control shift, and exceptional cases like promise . Other phenomena speak to the controllee: exhaustive control, partial control, split control, and control in embedded questions. Assuming that non‐obligatory control is a kind of elsewhere case, the phenomena relevant to non‐obligatory control are those where obligatory control restrictions on controller choice fail to materialize: control into subjects, extraposed clauses, and some adjunct clauses. The chapter also discusses phenomena with a non‐canonical realization of the control relation: backward control and copy control. Within the context of these phenomena, the chapter surveys current generative approaches to the analysis of control: dominant PRO‐based approaches, the movement theory of control, and restructuring analyses. Relative strengths and weaknesses are highlighted.

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Some Purported Problems for the Movement Theory of Control

Abstract: Ndayiragije (2012) and Wood (2012) present arguments against the movement theory of control (MTC) based on data from Kirundi and Icelandic, respectively. We show that these data are easily accounted for by current formulations of the MTC.

Cited by 6 publications

References 17 publications

Locality, control, and non-adjoined islands

Locality, control, and non-adjoined islands

A movement theory of adjunct control

Control Phenomena

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