Abstract
This paper provides evidence for the view that syntactic movement of an element Y to a position X is not driven by features of the target X, but by features of the moving element Y. The data that constitute evidence for this type of analysis come from A-bar movement constructions (object left and right dislocation; object relativisation) in the Bantu language Zulu. As I show, only object-DPs that move out of the VP in Zulu are active Goals for Agree-relations and can trigger object agreement with the verb. The fact that the functional head responsible for object agreement must be able to identify a DP in its c-command domain as an active Goal entails that the “mobility” of this DP must be encoded as a property of the DP. Based on this conclusion, I also discuss two proposals about the nature of the feature that activates a DP for movement in Zulu and examine the conditions that determine how this feature is checked and deleted through movement.
Highlights
The standard view in the Minimalist Program since Chomsky (2000, 2001) is that syntactic movement is driven by features of a functional head F that attract a phrase XP to move to F‟s specifier
The concrete claim that I defend in this article is that object-DPs in Zulu may optionally be equipped with an uninterpretable feature with a dual purpose: it repells the DP from its base position and forces it to move out of the VP, but at the same time, it activates the DP and turns it into an accessible Goal for the probing head associated with object agreement in Zulu
I complement my earlier empirical observations regarding Zulu right dislocation and relativisation (Zeller 2014, 2015) with new data from left dislocation and Quantifier Raising (QR), and I show that these data follow from the idea that A'movement in Zulu is driven by a feature of the moved element
Summary
The standard view in the Minimalist Program since Chomsky (2000, 2001) is that syntactic movement is driven by (so-called EPP- or edge) features of a functional head F that attract a phrase XP to move to F‟s specifier. An alternative position held by various authors is that the “mobility” of XP (i.e. the property of having to undergo movement) is encoded on the XP itself It is a feature associated with the head of XP that causes XP to be repelled from its base position. In light of this debate about the trigger for syntactic movement, I revisit the empirical data and theoretical conclusions discussed in my recent work on A'-movement in the Bantu language
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