Spell-out, Chains, and Long Distance Wh-movement in Seereer

Long-Distance Wh-Movement and Minimalism

1 Introduction Long wh-movement is a phenomenon by which an element appears to move directly from an A-or A-position to a higher A-destination, ignoring weak island constraints and bypassing the intermediate landing sites that are characteristic of successive-cyclic wh-movement. Cinque (1990) gives some examples of the contrast between long and successive-cyclic wh-movements, illustrating the l...

Understanding Cyclic Spell-Out

In Chomsky (1998) the interesting suggestion is made that syntactic structures may be phonetically interpreted in successive stages rather than at a single point, and that the input to occurrences of this “cyclic Spell-Out” process are phase constituents of type vP and CP. The cyclic Spell-Out/CSO hypothesis of the relation of syntax to phonology has been considerably influential since its intr...

Wh-Expletives and Secondary Predication: German Partial Wh-Movement Reconsidered

In German, complex wh-interrogatives can optionally be formed by inserting the 3 person neuter wh-pronoun was in the matrix (Spec,CP) position, instead of long-distance wh-raising. It is generally assumed that 'expletive' was serves as a placeholder for a contentful whexpression lower down in the sentence, which substitutes for it at the level of semantic interpretation. It can be shown, howeve...

Intervention Effects and wh-movement

Intervention effects visible in many natural languages have been a lively issue in the syntactic and semantic literature in the last decade, starting with the seminal work by Beck (1996) and followed by a number of equally influential analyses. This paper highlights the limitations of some of these studies and proposes a reanalysis of intervention effects in terms of head movement. This paper a...

WH-movement in Seediq and Tagalog