Agreeing and Moving across Traces: On Why Lower Copies May Be Transparent or Opaque

Within Minimalism, traces are often taken to be transparent for agreement and movement across them, which raises the question of how this could be properly accounted for within the copy theory of movement. This paper examines wh-traces in multiple wh-questions and argues that traces (lower copies) may or may not induce intervention effects depending on whether or not they are fully specified.

Predicate doubling by phonological copying

In this paper, I argue for an approach to copy constructions in syntax that does not rely on the copy theory of movement; rather, it employs copy operations as in standard cases of reduplication. As a case study, I consider predicate doubling constructions in (two varieties of) German, Hebrew, and Asante Twi. I argue that the choice between copying and do support in predicate doubling constructions can be reduced to the order of the two operations Move and Copy. The analysis relies on the assumption that predicate fronting in German must involve VPs (and cannot involve bare Vs); in an appendix, I provide independent evidence for this.

Binding reconstruction and two modes of copy-chain interpretation

We present a theory for the interpretation of Ā-movement chains at LF in the copy theory of movement where the NP restrictor of a DP Ā-movement chain is interpreted in only one copy. Such a view is motivated for English by evidence from reflexive binding, building on observations in Barss 1986, and its interaction with parasitic gap licensing and weak crossover effects. Our approach offers a means for understanding the classification of Ā-movement types in Cinque 1990 and Postal 1994 in copy-theoretic terms.

Focus association into copies and the scope of even

Nakanishi 2012 presents a novel argument for the so-called “scope theory” of English VP-even, based on examples with antecedent-contained deletion (ACD). Nakanishi’s argument is based on the assumption that even cannot associate with a focus which has moved out of its scope. I show that this assumption is incorrect, defusing Nakanishi’s argument. I propose that when even associates with a focus which has moved out of its scope, it actually associates with focused material in the lower copies of movement (trace positions). I show that a closer look at ACD examples of Nakanishi’s type in fact forms a new argument against the scope theory. I conclude that English VP-even must always be interpreted in its pronounced position. The patterns of focus association with even presented here constitute a new argument for the copy theory of movement.

The grammar of relative measurement

Relative measures such as percent and thirds relate one quantity to another. In several languages, determiner phrases containing relative measures can express two distinct construals: 1) The conservative construal in 'The company hired 55% of the women' considers the ratio of the company hires among all women. 2) The non-conservative construal in 'The company hired 55% women' is instead concerned with the ratio of women among the company hires. Other languages that distinguish the two construals using morphosyntactic means include German, Korean, Serbian, French, Georgian, Italian, and Hebrew. We present a syntactic and semantic analysis for the two construals. We argue that the non-conservative construal involves a different constituency of the measure-DP, and that focus semantics combined with a version of the copy theory of movement accounts for the non-conservative interpretation. Keywords: quantification, measurement, relations, fractions, conservativity, universals, copy theory

The verb doubling construction in Japanese

Japanese has expressions such as Basu-ga ki-ta ki-ta ‘A bus has finally come,’ where the verb-tense complex (ki-ta ‘came’ in this example) is doubled. This paper concentrates on these kinds of expressions, calling them the verb doubling construction (henceforth the VDC). The aim of this paper is to investigate the syntactic structure of the VDC in Japanese. Providing five pieces of evidence that the repeated verb-tense complex occupies the head of CP, we claim that the VDC constitutes a CP structure. We further point out that the analysis proposed here strongly supports the copy theory of movement (Chomsky, 1993).

Missing objects in special registers: The syntax of null objects in English

Even though null definite objects are usually ungrammatical in English, they are widely used in certain special registers. This paper investigates object drop in the recipe and, to a lesser extent, match broadcasting registers in English, contributing an analysis of a substantial set of naturally occuring data, hence making it possible to verify observations from previous syntactic studies of the phenomenon, which were based on a restricted array of isolated sentences. Having shown that the data support the assumption that the unrealised object is syntactically active, I propose a novel analysis of missing objects in special registers, guided by recent developments in the generative linguistic theory. Null realisation of the object is considered as an issue of externalisation and intralinguistic variation is attributed to the rules operating at the SM interface which make it possible to extend the application of copy deletion, as assumed within the copy theory of movement

A Syntactic Analysis of Two Types of Predicate Reduplication in Japanese

The properties of the two types of predicate reduplication in Japanese are investigated, and their syntactic derivation is proposed based on the copy theory of movement.