12.2972, Sum: Movement Paradoxes

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-12-2972. Wed Nov 28 2001. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 12.2972, Sum: Movement Paradoxes

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1)
Date:  Sat, 24 Nov 2001 11:31:24 +0100
From:  "Carsten Breul" <carsten.breul at ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
Subject:  movement paradoxes (12-2826)

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Sat, 24 Nov 2001 11:31:24 +0100
From:  "Carsten Breul" <carsten.breul at ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
Subject:  movement paradoxes (12-2826)

Dear all,

what follows is the summary of the responses to my query on
movement paradoxes (see issue 12-2826,
http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-2826.html#1). I will not repeat
the query here because of the already considerable length
of the present message.

Every reply I have got was helpful -- from reminding me of
something which I had forgotten, over confronting me with
further interesting observations to providing
bibliographical leads. Below I pick out some of the points
made, and give the bibliographical references (some of
which mentioned in more than one message) which are
directly concerned with movement paradoxes in P&P and MP
frameworks.

The most extensive reply that I have got is from Norio
Nasu. His message provides a very informative bird's eye
view on movement paradoxes, giving much theoretical
background and many more references (some of which also
mentioned in replies by other respondents). Norio Nasu
allowed me to quote extensively from his reply, which I am
happy to do further below.

The examples from Ward 1986/1988 (repeated at the end of
this message as (3)) have been found dubious by And Rosta
(speaker of BrE), who tends to think of such cases as
performance errors: "[...] by the time the speaker gets to
the auxiliary before the gap, they have forgotten the
morphosyntactic form of the fronted V, so the paradoxes
would be due to shortterm memory failures. I'd still
conjecture that if US English [see also below] is different
it arose, diachronically, from a grammaticization of such
performance errors."

For one AmE informant (3a) is ungrammatical and needs _did_
instead of _have_. For another respondent (BrE), _did_ is
needed instead of _have_ in (3d) and preferable in (3c) as
well; other similar examples, such as

(4) They said we should stand firm, and stand firm we have

are judged ok, though. For a third respondent (AmE), Ward's
judgments are ok, and

(5) We had to stand firm, and stood firm we have

i.e. the version of (3d) where the perfective participle is
used instead of the infinitive, is odd. Actually, Ward
(ib.) also observes that in some cases a preposed
infinitive is preferred over a preposed perfective
participle. For still another speaker of AmE the versions
where the verb in front position has the perfective
participle form are not only odd, but "consistently
ungrammatical".

It seems that we have quite significant idiolectal and/or
dialectal differences here.

It was suggested that a Spanish example like

(6)    Ver no lo vi
    ver: see-INF; no: not; lo: him; vi: saw
(I'm not sure what the best English translation of this
construction is)

may involve something similar as the movement-paradox
examples. My impression is that (6) is rather a type of
left dislocation/hanging topic construction. But this is,
first, an uninformed guess of mine and, second, not to
imply that the English constructions discussed above and
this Spanish one have nothing in common.

The Bresnan-judgments of (1a,b, 2a,b) (repeated at the end
of this message)  including the note that sentences like
(2a) are accepted by some speakers, are found plausible by
two of the respondents who commented on them. Carson
Schutze suspects "that people who think [(1a, 2a)] sound OK
are actually imagining that 'the fact' occurs before the in
situ that-clause." For one speaker (1b, 2b) need a pause
after the _that_-clause in front position. It is
interesting to note in this context that for one speaker
who comments on the Bresnan-example (Ib) mentioned by Norio
Nasu (see below), "the star is at most a question mark." As
the type of Bresnan-examples instantiated by Norio Nasu's
(Ia,b) involves what is commonly considered to be A-
movement in contrast to A'-movement as in (1, 2) which show
fronting/topicalisation/preposing, this judgment casts
doubt on the existence of a movement-paradox in this type
of A-movement context.

Kleanthes Grohmann proposes that the binding- and island-
behaviour of the _that_-clause in front position be tested
in order to find out whether it can be assumed to have
moved there in the first place (for applications of such
tests see e.g. Grohmann, K. 2000: Prolific peripheries,
Diss. U of Maryland; 2000: "Copy left dislocation" in:
Proceedings of the 19th West Coast Conference On Formal
Linguistics; 2000: "A movement approach to contrastive left
dislocation" in: Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 25). For
example, finding a consistent pattern of judgments with
respect to (7) under the distributive reading of the
possessive  may tell us if (7a) patterns with (7b),
suggesting movement, or with (7c), not suggesting movement.


(7)
a. [That his-i father was wrong] every-i boy talked about
for days.
b. His-i father, every-i boy talked about a lot.
c. His-i father, every-i boy talks about him.

Annabel Cormack and Niina Zhang point out that 'movement
paradoxes' may be problematic for the copy theory of
movement, but not necessarily for alternative approaches
(see e.g. Epstein, S. E. & Groat, R. &  Kawashima, H.
Kitahara, 1998: A Derivational Approach to Syntactic
Relations, Oxford University Press; Cormack, Annabel &
Smith, Neil, 2000: "Fronting: The syntax and pragmatics of
'focus' and 'topic'": UCL Working Papers in Linguistics
12).

Carson Schutze proposes the following solution of the
movement paradox:

"I think there's a pretty simple story to be told here,
which I however haven't seen in the literature:
prepositions are unpronounced when they precede a clause.
(Cf. the fact that in some languages, case markers are
unpronounced on a DP adjacent to a verb, but obligatory if
the DP is moved; or the fact that in English, infinitival
complements to verbs like 'want' must be introduced by
'for' except when that complement is adjacent to the verb.)
I.e., this is a fairly 'superficial' PF fact about English,
consistent with the fact that in Icelandic, for example,
prepositions take CP complements with no problem. (Thus,
for example, a story along the lines of Stowell's Case
Resistance Principle cannot be right, unless one can find
evidence that the Icelandic 'CPs' are really of a different
syntactic category from English CPs.)"

I suggest to take also the following (perhaps even simpler)
story into account: It can be assumed that the sources of
(1b, 2b) are not those in which _of_ and _about_ take a
_that_-clause as complement, but a [the fact that ...]-DP:

(8)
a. he didn't think of [the fact that he might be wrong]
     > [the fact that he might be wrong] he didn't think of
_t_
b. we talked about [the fact that he was sick for days]
    > [the fact that he was sick] we talked about _t_ for
days

The string _the fact_ can then be assumed to be deleted in
the phonological component of the grammar or, perhaps
preferably, during phonetic processing in performance.

The bibliographical hints I have got for P&P or MP analyses
directly concerned with the paradoxes are these:

Boskovic, Z. 1994: "Case properties of clauses and the
Greed principle": Studia Linguistica 49: 32-53.

Oku, Satoshi. 1998: A theory of selection and
reconstruction in the minimalist perspective. Diss U of
Connecticut.

Oku, Satoshi. 1996: "Perfective participle paradox in
English VP-fronting. In: Green, Antony Dubach &
Motapanyane, Virginia (eds.). 1996: Proceedings of the
thirteenth Eastern States conference on linguistics '96.
Ithaca: Cornell U. 282-293.

Webelhuth, Gert. 1992: Principles and parameters of
syntactic saturation. New York & Oxford: OUP.

****

Extensive quotes from Norio Nasu's reply:

You can find an analysis of the patterns like your (1) and
(2) in Boskovic (1994).

In addition to the data of topicalisation/preposing,
similar paradoxes are found in A-movement as well.  For
instance,Bresnan (2001:17) gives the following examples:

(I)
a.  That languages are learnable is captured by this
theory.
b. *This theory captures that languages are learnable.
cf. This theory captures the fact that languages are
learnable. (Bresnan 2001:17)

Additionally, movement paradoxes can be seen as a matter of
reconstruction. That is, sentences like (Ia, b) exhibit the
circumstance where a moved category cannot be put back to
its original position.  From this viewpoint, the following
sentences also exhibit a similar paradox.

(II) a.  The claim that John-1 was asleep seems to him-1 to
be correct. (Chomsky 1995:204) b. *It seems to him-1 that
John-1 was asleep.

(IIb) violates Condition C of the binding theory.  The
question is why (IIa) doesn't violate this condition.
Considering that the subject 'the claim that John was
sleep' is moved from the infinitival complement,
reconstruction of the subject into the embedded clause
creates a structure where 'John' is bound by 'him.'

In face of these paradoxes, there seem to be at least three
approaches: (i) There is no movement.  A seemingly moved
category is in fact base-generated where it appears. (ii)
Movement exists, but a moved category doesn't leave
anything in its original position or leaves an element non-
identical with it. (iii) Movement exists and a moved
category leaves its copy.  Movement paradoxes are
attributable to some unknown factor(s).

As far as A-movement is concerned, (i) is a position taken
by constraint-based grammars like LFG and HPSG.  There are,
however, several works in the principles-and-parameters
framework, which adopt (i).  The most recent paper is
Manzini and Roussou (2000).  Williams (1994) also advocates
the abolition of movement.  Jacobson (1992) presents
arguments for (i) in the framework of Categorial Grammar.
Cormack and Smith (1997) may also be helpful.

Nevertheless, movement paradoxes do not seem to lead
immediately to the rejection of movement operations.  The
insight behind these phenomena is that a moved category and
what it leaves behind are not always identical.

This insight is reflected in the approach (ii) and the
trace theory employed in the GB framework (cf. Fiengo 1977)
might also belong to this group on the assumption that a
trace is not identical with a moved category.

Movement paradoxes may pose a more serious question to the
copy theory of movement advocated by Chomsky (1995). In
this respect, Lasnik (1999) for example considers that an
argument does not leave any copy at all.

In contrast to the data (seemingly) against movement (such
as (I) above), it seems that the opposite possibility needs
to be taken into consideration. That is, is there any
phenomenon which indicates that a base position has to be
postulated?  What occurs to me in this connection is the
phenomena called radical reconstruction or total
reconstruction, whereby a moved category is forced to be
interpreted in its base position. Of course radical/total
reconstruction can also be accounted for without recourse
to base positions of moved categories but it is equally
possible to use the relevant data to argue for the
existence of such positions.  I have a chapter in my
forthcoming PhD thesis (which will/has to be ready in two
weeks time), where I explored this issue.

Another point which seems to be of some relevance is the
fact that there are certain differences between A- and A'-
operations with respect to reconstruction.  A common view
is that an category undergoing A'-movement leaves its copy,
whereas it remains controversial whether this is true for A-
movement.  On the other hand, movement paradoxes are found
not only in A-movement but also in A'- movement and head-
movement (see Bresnan 2001:18, 19). If movement paradoxes
are regarded purely as a matter of reconstruction, it
remains unclear how the A vs A' distinction in question
should be handled.  So, it seems to be desirable to examine
whether movement paradoxes are really a matter of
reconstruction.

References:

Boskovic, Z. 1994. Case properties of clauses and the Greed
principle. _Studia Linguistica_ 49, 32-53.

Chomsky, N. 1995. _The Minimalist Program_. MIT Press.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith. 1997. Checking features and split
signs. _UCL Working Papers in Linguistics_ 9. 223-252.

Jacobson, P. 1992.Raising without movement. In R. K. Larson
et al. (eds.) _Control and Grammar_. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 149-
 194.

Lasnik, H. 1999. Chains of arguments. In S. Epstein and N.
Hornstein (eds.) _Working Minimalism_.Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press. 189-215.

Manzini, M. R. and A. Roussou. 2000. A minimalist theory of
A-movement and control. _Lingua_ 110. 409-447.

Williams, Edwin. 1994. _Thematic Structure in Syntax_.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

***

(1)
a.	*He didn't think of that he might be wrong
b.	That he might be wrong he didn't think of

(2)
a.	*We talked about that he was sick for days
b.	That he was sick we talked about for days

(3)
a.	We had both been thrown into the water to sink or swim,
and swim we had -- we had swum from very far apart
b.	They told him that he had to be there all day long and
be there all day long he has!
c.	They provided us with enough beer to drink all day long
and drink all day we have!
d.	We had to stand firm, and stand firm we have!



Dr. Carsten Breul
Universität Dortmund
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Emil-Figge-Str. 50
44221 Dortmund
Germany
phone: (0231) 755-2898
e-mail: breul at englisch.fb15.uni-dortmund.de
        or
        carsten.breul at ruhr-uni-bochum.de

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