Locality in Correlatives

Abstract

Correlativization seems to be an intrinsicallynon-local strategy, where the Correlative clause can appeardiscontinuous from the noun phrase it modifies. I show that correlative constructions in the Modern Indo-Aryan languages neverthelessdisplay locality effects.The nature of these locality effects depends upon whether the correlativeclause involves a single relativization ('Simple') or mutiplerelativizations ('Multi-Head'). The generalization that emerges is thata Correlative clause must be merged as locally as possible to the phrasethat it modifies. Simple correlatives modify DPs and so they startadjoined to the DP that they modify and then are fronted to an IP-adjoinedposition. Such an approach is able to explain the hitherto unexplainedsensitivity of the correlative-modified phrase relationship to islands.Multi-Head Correlatives modify IPs and therefore they start adjoined to the smallestIP that contains the variables bound by the Multi-Head Correlative, followedby optional movement to the clause-initial position. My proposal argues that Simple Correlatives and Multi-Head Correlatives involve different derivational histories. This difference in derivationalhistory is then used to account for the many differences in their syntactic behavior. Finally, the 'Condition on Local Merge' from which this analysis follows is shown to have cross-linguistic support.