The adjunct condition and the nature of adjuncts

This paper proposes a Minimalist analysis of the Adjunct Condition. It shows that extraction from adverbial adjuncts is common, and it reviews and extends (Truswell, Robert. 2011. Events, phrases, and questions. Oxford: Oxford University Press analysis), which holds that extractions are grammatical when the adjunct and matrix predicates together constitute a macro-event. Syntactically, a UI feature (representing “unintegration”) on adjuncts must be active at either LF or PF; where it is active ill-formedness results. However, if a macro-event is possible, UI is inactivated at LF, allowing extraction; and though an active UI at PF normally causes ill-formedness, this is repairable by sluicing. This analysis improves on existing analyses by accounting for possible extractions, island repair by sluicing, and the basic conception of adjuncts as relatively unintegrated phrases.

Sluicing, Idioms, and Island Repair

In this article, we investigate idiom reconstruction in the context of sluicing constructions. We demonstrate that some idioms in English are not compatible with resumptive pronouns. On the basis of this observation, we argue that sluicing involves wh-gap dependencies rather than wh-resumptive pronoun dependencies, and that the island amelioration effect of sluicing does not result primarily from the island amelioration effect of resumptive pronouns.