Move-F and null operator movement

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide support for the recent hypothesis, proposed by Chomsky (1995), that movement is triggered by the need of feature checking and hence should in principle be realized in the form of feature movement. I will do so by demonstrating that the hypothesis makes it possible to account for some asymmetries between movement of overt operators and that of so-called null operators with an independently motivated constraint on movement. The outline of this paper is as follows : In section 1, I will briefly introduce Chomsky's (1995) feature movement hypothesis, setting the stage for the sections thereafter. In section 2, I will consider a puzzling restriction on relativization in Japanese and show that it can be accounted for rather easily if the feature movement hypothesis is adopted. In section 3, 1 will discuss an asymmetry observed between movement of wh-phrases and that of null operators in English and present an account for it by utilizing feature movement. Section 4 will be the summary