Dynamic antisymmetry for labeling

Abstract

The main question raised in this article is why movement of a phrase makes its copy left behind invisible for labeling. Adopting the assumption that movement consists of Copy and Merge, I propose that copying a phrase makes the original inactive in syntactic computation. I argue that this makes it possible (i) to derive the effects of the Phase-Impenetrability Condition on the assumption that Transfer involves Copy, (ii) to provide an account of that-trace effects in English, and (iii) to account for Rizzi's (2006) criterial freezing, as manifested in overt wh-movement in English. I further argue that the proposed system of labeling can be made compatible with the Agree-less approach, recently advocated by Hornstein (2009), with the assumption that feature-checking is conducted in labeling in terms of agreeing features. This brings us a nice consequence of properly dealing with the optionality of raising to object in the English ECM construction.