Constraints on Movement
Mayumi Hosono
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004261
June 2018
I argue, contra Chomsky (2013, 2015), that internal merge may not be free. It is shown that the Criterial Position (Rizzi 2006, 2010, 2015) is the position in which a raised category completes the valuation of all of its own unvalued features. The Halting Problem, the Extended Projection Principle, and the Empty Category Principle (as well as the disappearance of that effect) are all fully accounted for in terms of feature valuation. This unified account derives from the corollary of the derivational system of Labeling Algorithm (Chomsky 2013, 2015), in which labeling results from feature valuation. In Scandinavian Object Shift and Icelandic Stylistic Fronting, a category that does not have unvalued features can move from/into the Criterial Position (Hosono 2016). Following Chomsky (2013, 2015), who claims that (both external and internal) merge is free, movement from/into the Criterial Position would be allowed to occur with its legitimacy determined by filtering at the interfaces. If such movement is considered to occur exceptionally in narrow syntax, constraints on movement should exist. The argument that far more constraints on movement are imposed by phonology than have been considered so far (Hosono 2016, Richards 2016) indicates not only that internal merge may not be free, but also that narrow syntax will be crash-proof (Frampton and Gutmann 2002): the derivational mechanism will produce only well-formed structures that conform to the requirement by phonology, with no filters assumed.