Unifying the <i>that</i>-trace and anti-<i>that</i>-trace effects

Abstract

This article proposes a unified analysis of the that-trace and anti-that-trace effects in English. Unification of these two seemingly diametrically opposed effects remains an outstanding problem. It is argued that complement and relative clauses in English exhibit systematic variation in terms of how articulated their C-domains are. This, combined with Spec-to-Spec Anti-Locality, leads to a novel analysis of the anti-that-trace and that-trace effects. The analysis has interesting theoretical implications for phase theory and the mechanics of successive cyclicity, particularly concerning the position of the phase escape hatch, which is claimed to be the specifier of the complement of the phase head, and not the specifier of the phase head as in standard phase theory.

Subject and non-subject <i>ex-situ</i> focus in Dagbani

“…However, our analysis of Dagbani does not seem immediately compatible with the characterisation of antilocality given in either Grohmann (2003) or Bošković (2005). To the extent that our characterisation of these phenomena in Dagbani has been correct then, we have lent further support for the characterisation of antilocality in Erlewine (2016); Douglas (2017).…”

“…One is the formulation of antilocality itself. We have discuused a version following Erlewine (2016) and Douglas (2017) where (A'-)movement from Spec,TP is unable to proceed unless the moved element crosses a phrase other than TP. As noted in the introduction, there are various formulations of antilocality, and little agreement amongst them over what should count as too short, other than the proposal that there is some conception that movement cannot be too short.…”

“…Why such criterial effects should hold remains unexplained, and so a more promising alternative to us seems to be a spate of recent research which has attempted to account for the immobility of subjects through a specific formulation of antilocality. These works have looked at phenomena such as Agent Focus in Kaqchikel (Erlewine 2016), that-trace and anti-that-trace effects in English (Douglas 2017) and the subject condition more generally (Bošković 2016). Such approaches have all proposed some variation on the theme of antilocality, where movement is too short to be licit.…”

“…This much has been known for a long time, with various attempts to derive the effect, such as the Empty Category Principle (Chomsky 1981), Relativised Minimality (Rizzi 1990), and Criterial Freezing (Rizzi & Shlonsky 2007). Recent years have seen a renewed interest in these effects, coupled with approaches that try to subsume the problem under antilocality, the notion that movement cannot be too short (Grohmann 2003;Schneider-Zioga 2007;Erlewine 2016;Bošković 2016;Douglas 2017). Whilst there are different conceptions of anti-locality, one line of thinking is what Erlewine (2016), terms Spec-to-Spec Anti-Locality: 1 (1) Spec-to-Spec Anti-locality A'-movement of a phrase from the Specifier of XP must cross a maximal projection other that XP.…”

Movement from the Double Object Construction Is Not Fully Symmetrical

“…This is relevant not only because it provides novel evidence that Italian has both the DOC and PDC, but also because it provides crucial evidence that ApplP behaves like a phase head only in passive contexts. In Italian, the 5 It is not our aim here to provide an explanation of the English or Chichewa facts, but see Douglas (2016Douglas ( , 2017 for one possible analysis. 6 In the Liverpool dialect of English, (8d) is grammatical (Alison Biggs, personal communication).…”