Phrase impenetrability and wh-intervention

Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point the observation that something is wrong with a Minimal Link Condition (MLC) in a derivational grammar. Brody (2001) argues that a derivational approach to syntax should minimize search space, its representational residue; thus, the amount of structure that is visible and accessible to syntactic operations at any given step should be as small as possible. Given this tenet, it follows that constraints that minimize search space should be strengthened in a derivational grammar; in contrast, constraints that presuppose search space should be abandoned. A constraint that minimizes search space is the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC; see Chomsky (2000), Chomsky (2001b)); in contrast, the Minimal Link Condition (MLC; see Fanselow (1991), Ferguson and Groat (1994), Chomsky (1995), Chomsky (2000), Chomsky (2001b), among many others) is a constraint that presupposes search space. In line with this, I will argue that wh-intervention effects usually attributed to the MLC (more specifically, superiority effects as they arise with wh-movement in German and English), as well as certain superiority-like wh-intervention effects that the MLC has nothing to say about, can be derived from a strengthened version of the PIC – one that holds for phrases rather than phases. I will proceed as follows. Section 2 provides some background assumptions, introduces standard versions of the PIC and the MLC, and lays out conceptual arguments against the MLC, and for a version of the PIC that is based on a more local domain. Section 3 develops an approach to syntactic movement operations that dispenses with the MLC and relies on a more restrictive version of the PIC. The resulting approach is then shown to account for standard superiority effects in English, the absence of standard superiority effects in German, as well as a priori unexpected instances of superiority and superiority-like effects in both languages. Finally, section 4 draws a conclusion.