Comments on Vacuous Subject Movement1
J OE T ROTTA,D EPARTMENT OF THE HUMANITIES,H ALMSTAD U NIVERSITY
1Introduction
In this working paper, I discuss the phenomenon known as V ACUOUS S UBJECT M OVEMENT (henceforward also referred to as VSM) in English and th e problem pod for VSM by Chomsky’s (1986) V ACUOUS M OVEMENT H YPOTHESIS (henceforward also referred to as VMH), ie the idea that overt wh-movement does not take place for wh-subjects. I argue that, for both empirical and theory-oriented reasons, wh-subjects should be analyzed on a par with wh- non-subjects as occupying a different slot (a pre-C OMP position, presumably Spec-CP). Though the asymmetry which results from having two parate analys of wh-movement, one for wh-subjects and one for wh- non-subjects, creates theoretical problems and/or conquences for many of the current theoretical paradigms that deal explicitly with wh-phenomena (such as Principles & Parameters (P&P), Head-Driven Phra Structure Grammar (HPSG), and Optimality Theory (OT)), the prent work is theoretically-unaligned and takes into account both generative and non-generative considerations.
As a first step in introducing the data, consider the following examples:
(1) a. Why i is Ross always so angry with Rachel t i?
b.Who i did Monica marry t i.?
(2) a. For what insane reason i is Ross always so angry with Rachel t i?
b. Which of the guys at the coffee hou i did Monica marry t i.?
It is obvious in (1) and (2) that the wh-clau contains a wh-phra (which may consist of a single wh-word as in (1) or may be a larger phra as in the italicized strings in (2)) in a clau initial, non-canonical position (a so-called ‘landing site’) that is somehow related to, and coindexed with, an understood position (a so-called ‘extraction site’, here marked t i) somewhere el in the clau. Aside from the clear difference between the position of the clau initial wh-phra and the position of the understood functions of the phras, there is also visible subject-auxiliary2 inversion (SAI) in (1a) and (2a) and do-support in (1b) and (2b).
In contrast to non-subject wh-phras like tho in (1) and (2), it is not at all evident from the surface order of the elements in ntences like (3) below whether the wh-subject phras have a movement relationship3 analogous to their non-subject counterparts:
(3) a. Which of your friends is always angry with Rachel?
b.Who married Monica?
1 I would like to thank Mats Johansson, Halmstad University, Satu Manninen, Lund University and Aimo Seppänen, Göteborg University, for comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper.
2 In accordance with common practice, I include in the category of ‘auxiliary’ the copular be and some us of the posssive have, which usually behaves like a lexical verb, but may occasionally function like an auxiliary.
3 I prefer to u the term ‘movement relationship’, which in this study means a relationship between a wh-phra and its understood position. In this n, movement is understood solely metaphorically, ie ‘as if the item had been moved from its understood position to another position’.
Joe Trottabe cool
For all intents and purpos the extraction site and landing site are indistinguishable in (3) and therefore the subject position is often said to involve an unobrvable or so-called ‘vacuous’ movem
ent.
Although vacuous movement of subjects is of great theoretical importance to a linguistic model which posits a universal grammar, it is difficult to know the relevance of the facts or how they can best be applied to a theoretically unaligned description of English. Since it is not my intention in the prent work to advocate the u of transformational ‘movement’ rules, the only real issue I wish to address is whether wh-subjects should be analyzed analogously to wh- non-subjects as occupying different slot (presumably Spec-CP) than the gap which marks their canonical position, or if they should be analyzed on a par with ordinary subjects, which are in the canonical (postcomplem entizer, presumably Spec-IP4) position and have no concomitant gap.
1.1Various standpoints on VSM
It is not surprising that in the existing literature on the subject two competing analys are often prented, one which argues that the wh-subject remains in its ordinary non-wh- subject slot (Spec-IP) and one which argues that the wh-subject occupies a slot different than the non-wh- subject slot (Spec-CP).
Chung and McCloskey (1983) argue against vacuous subject movement bad on theory-internal as
sumptions derived from facts about island constraints (e ction 2.3.1). They claim that extractions out of claus with wh-subjects are more acceptable since the wh-subjects are not really moved into a Spec-CP position, eg in the following:
(4) What kinds of gifts i are there rules about [who can give tι to whom?]
The fronted phra what kinds of gifts can be wh-moved since who in the subordinate clau is not in a fronted Spec-CP slot and therefore subjacency is not violated.
Chomsky (1986:48-54) approaches the question from the language learner's point of view. In ntences with wh-subjects he argues that the child is given no clue about fronting and can therefore interpret the ntence as having the wh-constituent in the normal (non-wh) subject position. A t the end of his discussion Chomsky formulates a V ACUOUS M OVEMENT H YPOTHESIS (VMH), according to which fronting of the wh- subject is not an obligatory general rule and is assumed by the language learner only when he has overt evidence that such movement has taken place. Considering then a variety of extraction data originally discusd by Chung & McCloskey (1983), Chomsky argues that the facts can be very neatly described by an analysis which assumes no vacuous movement, while he admits at the same time that the data themlves in many cas are n
whatthehellot fully clear. In a brief discussion of the question, Haegeman (1994: 574-576) sums up the main points made by Chomsky but concludes that a firm a decision on the issue requires more rearch on the problems involved.
Clements et al (1983) attempt to refute Chomsky’s suggestion (Chomsky 1973: 254; Taraldn (1980), quoted in Clements et al 1983: 3) that the concept of vacuous movement is ruled out by a constraint which is part of universal grammar or by a principl e applying in the grammar of individual languages. Using cross linguistic evidence from Icelandic, Kikuyu and Irish they show that such a position is unacceptable and that vacuous subject movement must be allowed by the theory of grammar.
4 Spec-IP is sometimes referred to in current P&P/minimalist literature as Spec-TP. The technical differences between the two appellations are of no relevance to the prent analysis. See Radford 1997: 240-24
5 for details.
Comments on vacuous subject movement
副行长竞聘演讲稿
Cheng (1991: 31-32) argues that, in English subject questions, the wh-subjects are required to be in Spec-CP to satisfy the C LAUSAL T YPING H YPOTHESIS (CTH). Simply stated, Cheng’s CTH is ud to explain cross linguistic variation in wh-questions, in this ca the difference between a wh-in situ language like Chine and an overt wh-movement language like English. According to Cheng, English us overt wh-movement to satisfy clausal typing, ie C acquires the +WH-feature of the XP in its specifier. The Clausal Typing Hypoth esis requires Cheng to assume that subject wh-phras must undergo overt movement in English.
Rizzi’s (1991) wh-criterion has some similarities to Cheng’s CTH in that the wh-criterion involves the principle that the inflectional node carrying the WH-feature must move to the Spec-CP in interrogatives to create the required Spec-Head configuration with the wh-operator. Rizzi weighs the pros and cons of an analysis in which the wh-subject stays in Spec-IP and an analysis in which the wh-subject moves to Spec-CP. Both are awkward, but he concludes, for theory internal reasons, that movement to Spec-CP is less problematic than non-movement. He propos a solution in which the wh-criterion is interpreted as requiring that the chain of the relevant X0 position h as the feature +WH and not necessarily the position itlf. In other words, in Rizzi’s propod solution the +WH feature is not endowed on the clausal head (C0), but rather on the head of Infl (I0) – thus it is l
owered to the V. Conquently, agreement i s minimally expresd by coindexation; C0 forms a chain with I0 and with the lowered inflection containing the +WH (for an expanded discussion of the technical details, e Rizzi 1991).
Grimshaw (1995:16 -17), within the framework of optimality theory, speculates that a wh-operator does not necessarily need to occur in the Spec-CP slot, but rather that it is only required to occur in a Spec position from which it c-commands the verbal extended projection. The relevant candidate Spec positions for wh-operators are then Spec-VP, Spec-IP and Spec-CP. For non-subject wh-phras, the only possible position is the Spec-CP since both Spec-VP and Spec-IP are already filled (by the subject depending on the prence or abnce of an auxiliary). However, for wh-subjects, she argues that no movement to Spec-CP is necessary since the wh-subject is either in the Spec-IP (when an aux is prent) or the Spec-VP (when no auxiliary is prent) and in the two situations the relevant Spec position is already the Specifier of the highest phra in the verbal extended projection.
Radford’s (1997: 292-294) discussion repeats the standard argument that the lack of an inverted auxiliary in subject questions casts doubt over the view that the wh-subject moves into the Spec-CP position. On the other hand, Radford notes that even on the alternative view, the lack of wh-moveme
nt and the lack of auxiliary inversion po problems, and he propos two or three different ways of dealing with them by appropriate modifications in the application of the theoretical machinery and the general principles assumed within the minimalist approach (e also ction 2.2.1 below).
As a reprentative example of a descriptive grammar that takes up the asymmetries of the wh-subject analys, Huddleston (1984: 395) takes a pragmatic approach to the problem, stating that either analysis can be applied, though the advantage to the vacuous movement analysis is that it allows a unified approach to the form of wh-claus.
A further, more recent attempt to ttle the differences between the analys of movement for wh-subjects vs movement for wh- non subjects has been made by Agbayani (2000). In his analysis it is possible to reconcile the evidence for and against the two analys by proposing a split treatment of overt wh-movement. This so-called split treatment involves that the +WH-feature is moved to the Spec-CP position while the wh-subject remains in the Spec-IP slot – becau no phonological material would intervene between the +WH-Spec-CP and the wh-subject in the Spec-IP, no movement needs to apply to move the wh-subject to Spec-CP to satisfy adjacency requirements (adjacency has a significant role in this account, for the specific details, e Agbayani 2000). In this fashion, Agbayani’s analysis satisfies the
韩语学习
Joe Trotta
CTH while at the same time it does not violate the economy principle, which states that syntactic derivations should involve as few grammatical operations as possible.
2 A clor look at the data
So far in this study I have only ud examples of independent wh-interrogatives, however, there are four basic types of wh-clau (e Trotta 2000 for a detailed discussion of wh-clau types), which must be considered. Two of the clau types, interrogatives and exclamatives, can occur as both dependent and independent claus:
dependent:independent:
(5) interrogative: I don’t know who was prent. Who was prent?
(6) exclamative:You won’t believe what strange What strange people were伤感网名2013最新版
people were on the tram today. on the tram today!
(7) free relative:He threw what was left of the --
cheecake at the dog.
(8) bound relative: The author who wrote the novel --
Fight Club has a long last name.
Since the facts concerning the central question in this study differ slightly for each clau type, and also becau the variation between the dependent and independent clau require special treatment, I choo to structure the discussion below by first focusing on the dependent claus in ction (2.1) and moving on to the independent claus in ction (2.2).
2.1Dependent wh-claus
As the dependent wh-claus in ntences in (5) to (8) stand, there is no overt evidence to indicate that the wh-subjects occupy a pre-C OMP (Spec-CP) slot and all could, in principle, be said to be in the same syntactic slot that any ordinary subject would occupy, ie post-S (Spec-IP), such as Mary in Mary killed the rat.
The first piece of evidence for a VSM analysis comes from facts about echo questions. In the transformational school, wh-echo questions have sometimes been ud as a way of supporting the cequity
laim that the S-structure position of wh-items differs from the D-structure position of the same items (cf Radford 1988: 467-468, e also Haegeman & Guéron 1999: 524-526) :
(9) a. My father will put the Mercedes in the garage.
b. Your father will put [which car] in the garage? (echo)
c. [Which car] will your father put in the garage? (non-echo)cul
中文转换韩文
The typical position of the syntactic function of the wh-XP (here direct object of put) is indicated by the position of this item in its echo-question counterpart. Compare now the echo and non-echo versions of the subordinate interrogatives with wh-subjects in (10b-c) below:
(10) a. Bill didn’t say that/whether/if John would arrive first
b. Bill didn’t say that/whether/if who would arrive first? (echo)
c. Bill didn’t say (*that/*whether/*if) who would arrive first. (non-echo)
Comments on vacuous subject movement
The grammaticality of the inrtion of a complementizer (that/whether/if) in (10b) and the ungrammaticality of the non-echo version of this ntence in (10c) is a powerful indication that the wh-subject + predicate string is different in a very real way from the non-wh subject + predicate string. It would then em reasonable to consider the echo-question position as the ‘extraction site’ and the non-echo question position as the ‘landing site’ – entailing a movement relationship (albeit vacuous) between the two positions.
The only shortcoming with evidence from echo questions is that, by its very nature, it can only be ud to argue for a VMS analysis for dependent interrogatives. For the other wh-clau types, it is necessary to find verification from other sources.
The cond piece of evidence for a pre-C OMP position for wh-subjects in dependent claus comes from attested examples of the wh- + that pattern in modern English (e Seppänen & Trotta 2000 for a full discussion, e also Henry 1995 for a discussion of wh- + that in Belfast English). The reasoning I wish to invoke here is that if it is possible to inrt a complementizer that after the wh-subject, then an argument for a pre-C OMP position is substantially strengthened. Consider now
the following examples in (11), (12) and (13), taken Seppänen & Trotta (2000) and Trotta (2000:85, 116, 144):
(11) a. It’ll probably be evident from the field which of the players that∆ are feeling the
jbxheat most. (cited in Radford 1988: 500)
b. I wonder if he could describe to us what influence that∆ has been brought to bear
on the the [sic] overall calculation? (bnc JAC 367 364)
c. Yeah. Erm we owned a little and just thought I’d ask the party e how many
things that∆ cropped up as a result John! (bnc KDW 7074 246)
(12) Your nan’s being rude It’s surprising how it’s surprising how much stuff that collects
under there isn’t it? (bnc KCC 510 158)
(13) a. …everything is being done to e that whatever attempts that∆ are made on the
whereabouts of its disclosures will be judged by their predicament and a positive
answer will be prepared. (bnc EUY 650 364)
b. Suddenly, an enormously large and dark shape blocked out what little light that∆
remained at depth. (bnc FBR 67 357)
c. Investors have been expecting whatever government that∆ emerges from the
general elections on June 6th to lower interest rates and d evalue the peta, in
order to revive Spain’s flagging economy. (bnc CR7 2749 305)
d. Life in Turtle Ridge was quiet and uneventful for Autumn. What excitement that
∆ did ari was usually of her own making, and ∆ always brought new waves of
gossip. (CDC ukbooks/08. Text: B115)
Example (11) shows the wh- + that pattern with subordinated wh-interrogatives, (12) shows the same pattern for exclamatives and (13) exemplifies free relatives. It should be noted that the paucity of attested examples for exclamatives (12) is only to be expected owing to the rarity of wh-subjects i
n exclamatives, the overall infrequency of the clau type itlf, and the peripheral nature of the wh- + that pattern (e Trotta 2000: 115-116).
It could also be argued that an interrogative interpretation of (12) cannot be completely ruled out and therefore this example may indeed say nothing about the wh- + that pattern, and conquently nothing about the status of VSM in exclamatives. In order to e if forcing an
Joe Trotta
exclamative interpretation changes the grammaticality of (12), vari ations of this example were prented to native speaker informants as (14):
(14) a. It’s surprising what an incredible amount of stuff that collects under there isn’t it?
b. It surprising how very many things that can collect under there, isn’t it?
c. It surprising how very much stuff that can collect under there, isn’t it?
Although veral informants commented that they felt the inrtion of that was superfluous, they did not reject the examples as ungrammatical, nor did they feel that the examples in (14) were wor that in (12).
Even though some of the examples in (11) through (13) are spoken and therefore reprent a more i nformal style, they show that a complex wh-subject can be parated from the following clau with an intervening complementizer that, further su bstantiating the claim that wh- and non-wh-subjects occupy different syntactic slots.
Having examined the wh- + that pattern for dependent interrogatives, exclamatives and free relatives, the next issue to resolve is whether this same evidence can be ud to make any claims about the status of VSM in bound relative claus. Interestingly enough, bound relatives are different than any of the other types of wh-claus so far discusd in that, although veral examples of a wh- + that string are found in the larger corpora, only one is accepted by at least some of my native informants:
(15) (*?) The main question the novel pos is how we know, remember or invent the past.
Philip Hayley, the main character of the novel, undertakes an excavation of the life of his charlatan father, around who numerous exploits that the plot revolves. (bnc G1N 254 197)
This is in contrast to the overall acceptability of the wh- + that pattern in other clau types (with certain prerequisites, e Seppänen & Trotta (2000)). The obvious question is then: What is the signi
allegoricalficance of this finding for the analysis of the position of the fronted wh-XPs in bound relatives? If no element which marks off the clau boundary can be inrted after the wh-XPs in this clau type, should clau initial wh-items be considered pre-C OMP or not? Without the help of the wh- + that pattern in bound relatives, is there any evidence to support an analysis of the syntactic position of the items as different than their non-wh- subject counterparts?
I believe that evidence of such a nature can be derived from facts about adverbial placement in English. The adverbial slot between the subject and verb, referred to by Quirk et al (1985: 490-495) as either M (medial position) or iM (a position between initial and medial), depending on the prence of an auxiliary5 can easily be occupied by certain adverbials, usually indicating modality or degree as in (16):
(16) a. I really haven’t had a chance to e it.
b. You probably want to ask a specialist about that.
c. John usually leaves messages for me on my computer.
In regard to the structure of such (i)M adverbials, Quirk et al (1985: 493) state that ‘Only for a heavily
special effect would a clau or lengthy prepositional phra be placed at M (and then it would be clearly marked off by commas in writing or by prosody in speech).’ Later
5 The positions are not exactly the same but are similar enough for the prent purpos to be conflated into one, e Quirk et al (1985: 490-495) for details on each position.
