Chapter 10

WH-MOVEMENT

0.

INTRODUCTION

In the last chapter we looked at situations where NPs were appearing in positions where they didnt get theta roles. Instead, the were in a derived position. The trigger for this movement was the requirement that NPs bear a case. This case can only be assigned in specific structural positions. In this chapter, we turn to another kind of phrasal movement, one where NPs already have case. NPs (and other phrases) move for a different reason. This transformation is found in Questions. There are several different kinds of questions, only two of which we will be concerned with in this book. The first kind is the familiar yes/no question that we looked at in the chapter on head-movement: 1) Are you going to eat that bagel? 2) Do you smoke Camels? 3) Have you seen the spectrograph for that phoneme?

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The answers to these questions cannot be a phrase other than Yes or No. Any other response is infelicitous: 1) 2) 3) #Pizza/ 3yes #Marlboros/ 3no #Syntactic tree./ 3 no

The other kind of question were interested in are called Wh-questions. They take this name from the fact that the words that introduce them (mostly) begin with <wh> in English: who, what, when, where, why, which, and how. The responses to these kind of questions cannot be yes or no. Instead they must be informative phrases. 4) When did you do your syntax homework? 5) What are you eating? 6) How is Louise feeling? #Yes / 3Yesterday #No/ 3 A bagel #yes/3much better

It's the syntax of this kind of question that is the focus of this chapter.

Who and Whom In traditional prescriptive grammar there are two wh-words that refer to people: who and whom. Who is used when the wh-word originates in subject position and gets nominative case. Whom is the accusative version. In most spoken dialects of Canadian and American English this distinction no long exists, and who is used in all environments. For the sake of clarity, I use who(m) to indicate that the wh-word originated in object position, but you should note that from a descriptive point of view who is perfectly acceptable in object position.

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1.

MOVEMENT IN WH-QUESTIONS

If you look closely at a statement and a related wh-question, you'll see that the wh-word appears in a position far away from the position where its theta role is assigned. Take for example: 7) Becki bought the syntax book 8) What did Becki buy? The verb 'buy' in English takes two theta roles, an external agent and an internal theme. In sentence (7), Becki is the agent, and [ the syntax book ] is the theme. In sentence (8), Becki is the agent and what is the theme. In the first sentence, the theme is the object of the verb, in the second the theme is at the beginning of the clause. The situation becomes even more mysterious when we look at sentences like (9) 9) What did Stacy say Becki bought? In this sentence what is still the theme of bought, yet it appears way up at the beginning of the main clause. This would appear to be a violation of the locality condition on theta role assignment introduced in the last chapter. The situation becomes even more murky when we look at case. Recall that accusative case is assigned when an NP is the sister to a V: 10) Matt kissed her But in wh-questions the accusative form (like whom) is not a sister to V: 11) Whom did Matt kiss? So it appears as if not only are these wh-words not in their theta positions, they aren't in their case positions either! Given what we've seen in the previous two chapters this looks like another case of movement. This one with different triggers again. Let's start with the question of where wh-words move to. One position that we've had for a Andrew Carnie

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while, but have never used is the specifier of CP. It's to this position that we'll move wh-words: 12) CP C' C NP Matt INFL did IP I' VP V' V NP whom Notice that what moves here is an entire phrase. You can see this if you look at slightly more complex wh-questions: 13) [To whom] did Michael give the book 14) [Which book] did Michael give to Millie When you move an entire phrase, it cannot be an instance of head-to-head movement (by definition), so this must be movement to a position other than a head, in this case we have the empty specifier of CP.

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A Mystery: No INFLC movement in embedded clauses. In the main text, we've noticed that wh-movement and INFLC movement often go hand in hand. One surprising fact about English is that this is not true of embedded wh-questions. When a wh-question is embedded the subject does not invert with the auxiliary (i.e. no INFLC movement): i) I wonder what he has done? ii) *I wonder what has he done? Why you don't get INFLC movement in embedded wh-clauses is a mystery. We don't have a good explanation for it . Notice that the movement to the specifier of CP accounts for another fact about the word order of wh-questions: they also involve IC movement (in main clauses): 15) Who(m) are you meeting? 16) *Who(m) you are meeting? This means that the wh-word must raise to a position higher than C. The only one available to us is the specifier of CP:

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258 17) CP C' C NP Matt INFL did IP

Sentence Structure: A Generative Introduction

I' VP V' V NP whom

The same fact can be seen in languages that allow both a wh-word and an overt complementizer: 18) C aL bh sa seomra? Who that-wh was in-the room Who was in the room (Irish)

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The Doubly filled CP Filter While CP's containing Wh-phrases allow complementizers to contain an inverted auxiliary: ([ CP What did [IP she kiss ]]?) They don't allow any other kind of complementizer: i) ii) *I asked what that she kissed? *I asked what whether she kissed?

Multiple wh-phrases are also not allowed: iii) *I asked what how she kissed?

There thus seems to be a constraint that disallows the CP having multiple pronounced contents. This constraint is called the doubly filled CP filter: iv) * [CP WH that ] This constraint holds of English only. Other languages allow both a complementizer and the wh-phrase (Data from Bavarian German, Bayer 1984): v) I woass ned wann dass da Xavea kummt. I know not when that the Xavea comes "I don't know when Xavea is coming'

See also example (18) from Irish in the main text.

Before turning to the constraints on wh-movement let's briefly consider what would trigger wh-movement. One possibility is to motivate it with a special form of the question feature. Let's call this feature [+WH], this resides in the C of a Wh sentence. A wh-word moves to the specifier of CP to be "near"

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the [+WH] feature. Another way to phrase this is to say that wh-words move in to the specifier of CP to "check" the wh-feature. We can formalize whmovement the following way: 19) Wh Movement Move a wh-word to the specifier of CP to check a wh-feature in C. The existence of a [+WH] feature on C is not completely unmotivated. In some languages (such as Irish), there are special forms of complementizers that represent these features: 20) [-Q, -WH] [+Q, -WH] [+Q, +WH] go an aL

Traces - Wanna contraction. In the last chapter, we obliquely suggested that movement leaves a 'trace' behind which we represented with a t (coindexed with word it replaces). Here too we are going to claim that wh-movement leaves a trace at the base position of movement. Later in this chapter we'll see that traces are required to block certain kinds of illicit movement. But an important question is whether is any reality behind the notion 'trace'. This is especially important in a theory like generative grammar which claims psychological underpinnings. Finding evidence for something that isn't pronounced is remarkably difficult. However, quite surprisingly there is some straightforward evidence for the existence of traces. First a little background: In spoken varieties of English (both standard and non-standard) function words often contract with nearby words. One such contraction takes non finite INFL ('to') and contracts it with a preceding verb like want: i) I want to leave I wanna leave

This phenomenon is called wanna contraction. Now consider what Andrew Carnie

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happens when you have wh-movement and wanna contraction going on at the same time. Wanna contraction is permitted when the whmovement applies to an object: ii) Who(m) do you wanna kiss

But look what happens when you try to wanna contraction, when whmovement targets the subject: iii) iv) Who do you want to kiss the puppy? *Who do you wanna kiss the puppy?

English speakers have very strong judgements that wanna contraction is impossible when the subject is wh-questioned. Why should this be the case? If we have traces, the explanation is simple: the trace intervenes between the 'to' and the verb. It blocks the strict adjacency between the verb and the to, thus blocks contraction: v)Whoi do you want ti to kiss the puppy? Without the theory of traces, we wouldn't have any explanation for this fact.

Let's do a derivation for the following sentence: 21) Whom is Matt kissing? The D-structure of this sentence will look like (22):

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262 22) CP C' C [+Q,+WH] NP Matt INFL is IP

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I' VP V' V kissing NP

whom Matt and whom both get their theta roles in these positions1. The both also get case in these positions. What is lacking in this D-structure is the unpronounced [+Q] feature and the unchecked [+WH] feature. We get INFLC movement to solve the first problem: 23) CP C' C [+Q,+WH] NP Matt INFL is IP I' VP V' V
1

NP

For simplicity's sake I'm abstracting away from the VP internal subject hypothesis. If we assumed the VP internal subject hypothesis we'd have to move Matt from the specifier of VP to the specifier of IP for case. Andrew Carnie

Chapter10 Wh-Movement kissing whom Wh-movement applies to solve the second: 24) CP C' C [+Q,+WH] NP Matt INFL is I' VP V' V kissing NP whom This results in the surface string: 25) Whom is Matt kissing? IP

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Consider a more complicated example, this one involves, NP movement, Wh-movement and INFL C movement: 26) Who was kissed? The D-structure of this sentence is in (27)

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264 27) CP C' C [+Q,+WH] IP

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I' INFL was VP V' V kissed NP who Who is the only argument in the sentence (a theme) and it is assigned it's theta role in object position. Since this is a passive, however, it cannot get case in this position. It must move to the specifier of IP to get Nominative case: 28) CP C' C [+Q,+WH] IP Nominative Case I' INFL was VP V' V kissed NP who

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Once this NP has been licensed by case, it can move on to the specifier of IP. The auxiliary also undergoes INFLC movement. 29) CP Wh-feature checking C' C [+Q,+WH] IP Nominative Case I' INFL was VP V' V kissed NP who All in all there are three movements in this structure, NP movement, IC movement and Wh-movement. Wh-movement only moves NPs that are casemarked. If we were simply to skip the NP movement as in the ill-formed tree in (30): Theta Role

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266 30) *CP

Sentence Structure: A Generative Introduction Wh-feature checking C' C [+Q,+WH] IP Nominative Case I' INFL was VP V' V kissed NP who Theta Role

The NP who would never get case, and thus would violate the case filter, (30) is not an acceptable derivation. Wh-movement can also apply across clauses. Now, we'll do a derivation of a sentence where the Wh-phrase moves from an embedded clause to the specifier of a main clause CP. 31) Who(m) did you think Jim kissed?

The D-structure of this sentence will look like (32). In this tree, who(m) is theta marked by the verb kiss, and gets it's internal theme theta role in the object position of that verb. The two NPs also can get case in their D-structure positions, so there is no NP movement:

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Chapter10 Wh-Movement 31) CP C' C [+Q,+WH] NP you INFL -ed IP NOMINATIVE CASE I' VP V' V Think CP C' C [+Q,+WH] NP NOMINATIVE CASE Jim INFL -ed VP V' V kiss ACCUSATIVE CASE NP I' IP

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whom

Starting with the embedded clause, we can note that the INFL suffix -ed needs support, so it undergoes affix lowering:

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268 32) CP C' C [+Q,+WH] NP you INFL -ed IP

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I' VP V' V think C' C [+Q,+WH] NP Jim INFL -ed I' VP V' V kiss NP whom IP CP

There is no NP movement in this sentence, but there is an unchecked [WH] feature in the main clause. This causes the phrase "whom" to move. In addition, there is the unpronounced [+Q] feature; this triggers movement of INFLC. However, since there isn't an auxiliary in INFL, the rule of do-insertion also applies:

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Chapter10 Wh-Movement 33) CP C' C [+Q,+WH] NP you INFL -ed IP I' VP V' do V think C' C [+Q,+WH] NP Jim INFL -ed I' VP V' V kissed NP IP CP

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whom This derives the correct S-structure.

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The that-trace effect In English there is a strange effect with respect to complementizers found with wh-movement from an embedded clause. Wh-movement of objects seems to be free, you can do it either when there is a complementizer or when there is no complementizer: i) Whati do you think Matt kissed ti ? ii) Whati do you think that Matt kissed ti ? Strangely, this is not the case with subjects. Wh-movement from subject position is only possible when there is no overt that complementizer: iii) Whoi do you think ti kissed Matt? iv) *Whoi do you think that ti kissed Matt? This surprising effect is called the that trace effect, from the constraint that is used to rule out sentences like (iv), the that trace filter: v) * that t The that trace effect is not universal. Many languages (such as Italian), don't have it: vi) Chi credi che ti venga? Who you-think that ti come "Who do you think is coming (Rizzi 1982) The explanation for the that trace effect consumed much of the syntactic literature from the 1980s to about 1991, but lies beyond the scope of this text.

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2. CONSTRAINTS ON WH-MOVEMENT: BOUNDING THEORY

Wh-movement isn't limited to just NPs. It can apply to a wide variety of phrasal categories: 34) 35) 36) 37) 38) To whom did you give the book ? Why did you dance the macarena? How did you cut your toe? When did you cut your toe? Which book did you drop off at the library (PP) (AP) (AP) (AP) (NP)

It isn't without some limitations however. These limitations hold on what categories you can move out of (the categories that contain the wh-word). Compare the following two sentences, one of which has wh-movement out of simple complement CP (39). The other (40) moves a wh-word out of a clause that is contained inside an NP (a relative clause). 39) Whati did Bill claim [CP that he read ti in the syntax book?] 40) *What did Bill make [NP the claim [CP that he read ti in the syntax book?]] In sentence (39), we see that wh-movement out of a complement clause is grammatical. The nearly parallel sentence (40), on the other hand, shows that not all wh-movement out of a CP is acceptable. In particular it seems that you can't move a wh-word out of a CP contained within an NP. This phenomenon, first observed by Ross (1967), has come to be known as the Complex NP island phenomenon. The word Island here is meant to be iconic. Islands are places you can't get off of (without special means like a plane), they are surrounded by water, so you are limited in where you can move: you can only move about within the confines of the island. Islands in syntax are the same. You cannot move out of an island, but you can move around within it. Noun Phrases are islands. 41) *What did Bill make [NP the claim [CP that he read ti in the syntax book?]] Complex NP island

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There is another kind of island. First, observe that it is possible to move a wh-word to the specifier of an embedded CP2: 42) I wonder [CP what [IP John bought t with the $20 bill]] It is also possible to move (another) wh-word to the specifier of the main CP : 43) [CP How do [IP you think [ John bought the sweater?]]]. However, look at what happens when you try to do both (move one wh-word to the embedded specifier, and the other to the main CP specifier: 44) *[CP Howj do [IP you think [CP whati [IP John bought ti tj]]]] This sentence is wildly ungrammatical -- even though we have only done two otherwise legitimate transformations. Now this isn't a constraint on having two wh-words in a sentence. That is perfectly acceptable3: 45) How do you think John bought what? 46) I wonder what John bought how? It seems then to be a constraint on moving both of them. The same kind of example is seen in (47)-(48): 47) I wonder whati John kissed ti 48) Whoj did you think tj kissed the gorilla
2

There is actually a restriction on this. Wh movement to an embedded CP can only take place when the main verb selects (theta marks) a question clause. Verbs that do this are verbs like wonder and ask. Verbs like 'think' don't allow embedded wh-questions. Since there will be occasions where we want to compare embedded wh, and non-embedded wh, I'm going to play fast and loose with the choice of main verbs. I'll use wonder when I want an embedded question, but think when I want an embedded statement (with no [+WH feature]). 3 If you have trouble with this judgement, try stressing the word what in (45) and how in (46). Andrew Carnie

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Movement of either the subject (47) or the object (48) to the specifiers of CP is acceptable. However movement of both results in terrible ungrammaticality: 49) *Whoj did you think whati tj kissed tj The central intuition underlying an account of these facts is that once you move a wh-word into the specifier of a CP that CP becomes an island (normally called a wh-island) for further extraction: 50) I asked [CP whati John kissed ti ] wh-island

Movement out of this wh-island results in ungrammaticality. What is lacking from what we have said so far has been a formal description of the fact that you can't extract out of islands. In the ideal situation, we want our formal description to account for both types of islands (complex NP islands and wh-islands.) In the mid-1980s a theory of these facts was developed, called bounding theory (this is not to be confused with binding theory which accounts for the distribution of anaphors). Although currently a matter of great controversy, we will explore the most widely accepted version of bounding theory. The central idea underlying bounding theory is that certain kinds of nodes are boundaries for movement. These nodes are called bounding nodes. There are two bounding nodes: IP and NP. 51) Bounding nodes: NP and IP.

Now it is clear that we can't simply say "Don't cross a bounding node". A simple wh question like (52) violates this off the bat: 52) [CP whoi did [IP John see ti ]]

yet sentence (52) is completely grammatical. The account has to be more complicated. The answer lies in the Subjacency condition of Chomsky (1973):

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53) Subjacency Condition: Wh-movement may not cross more than one bounding node (but it may cross one). Let's see how this works. First consider the grammatical sentence in (52). The wh-movement there only crosses one bounding node. So the sentence meets the subjacency condition. As an aside note that the subjacency condition forces us to make a stipulation on wh-movement across clauses: 54) [CP whati did [IP you think [CP that [IP Millie said ti ?]]]]

Movement of this kind will necessarily cross two IPs, and thus should be a violation of the subjacency condition. However, the sentence is grammatical! Remember, wh-movement targets the specifier of CP. There is an unfilled specifier of CP between the two IPs 55) [CP whati did [IP you think [CP that [IP Millie said ti ?]]]]

If we allow the wh-word to stop off in this specifier on the way to the higher CP, we won't violate the subjacency constraint. We will have two movements, each of which will cross only one bounding node:

56) [CP whati did [IP you think [CP

that [IP Millie said ti ?]]]] move # 1

57) [CP whati did [IP you think [CP ti that [IP Millie said ti ?]]]] move # 2 By allowing the wh-word to stop off in the intermediate specifier of CP, we have an out for the (grammatical) movement of wh-words across clause

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boundaries. This property of stopping off intermediate specifiers of CPs is sometimes called cyclicity. There are two cycles of movement in deriving a sentence like (57). The first cycle moves to the embedded CP specifier, the second to the higher one. Now that we've seen that we can generate the grammatical sentences, let's see if we can account for the island conditions with the Subjacency Condition. First, a complex NP island. 58) *Whati did Bill make the claim that he read ti in the syntax book?] A partial D-structure of this sentence is given in (59) (this isn't the real Dstructure -- I haven't bothered to undo any affix lowering or INFLC, I've only undone the relevant wh-movement). Ive marked the potential landing sites for the wh-word with an underline and the bounding nodes with a circle:

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276 59) _____ C did Bill INFL I' VP V' V make the N' N claim NP CP C' IP

Sentence Structure: A Generative Introduction

N' CP ____ C he INFL C' IP I' VP V' V' V read NP what PP in the syntax book

There are three bounding nodes in this tree: the matrix IP, the object NP, and the embedded IP. (Note that there are other NP nodes in this tree, but they do not count as bounding nodes as we are only concerned with what nodes you can

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move out of. So the only relevant NP nodes are those that contain (dominate) the wh phrase. The first step in the movement is to move the wh-phrase into the specifier of the embedded CP. This is a legitimate move as it only crosses one bounding node.

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278 60) _____ C did Bill INFL I' VP V' V make the N' N claim NP CP C' IP

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N' CP ____ C he INFL C' IP I' VP V' V' V read NP what PP in the syntax book

Next let's try to move to the next available node: the specifier of the higher CP:

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Chapter10 Wh-Movement 61) *CP C' C did Bill INFL I' VP V' V make the N' N claim ____ C he INFL N' CP C' IP I' VP V' V' V read NP what PP in the syntax book NP IP

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_____

This move is illegitimate. It violates the subjacency condition by crossing two bounding nodes: the NP and the highest IP. This is a good result, since the sentence is ungrammatical. The subjacency condition correctly predicts that this

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sentence will be bad. Notice that we can't use the escape hatch we used with the grammatical sentence. There is no specifier of CP between the highest IP and the NP, so there is no stopping off place. For completeness sake, here is the tree for the comparable sentence without an NP island (What did Bill claim that he read in the syntax book): 62) *CP _____ C did Bill INFL I' VP V' V claim _____ C he INFL C IP I' VP V' V' V read NP what PP in the syntax book CP C' IP

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Without the containing NP, each wh-movement only crosses one bounding node, so the sentence is grammatical. Now, we'll do a wh-island sentence: 63) *Whoj did you wonder whati tj kissed t The D-structure for this sentence (again ignoring all extraneous transformations like INFLC, etc) is shown in (64). 64) CP C' C did you INFL I' VP V' V wonder CP ____ C NP who INFL C' IP I' VP V' V kissed NP what IP

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Here there are only two bounding nodes, but there are also two wh-phrases to contend with. First we'll move what to the lower CP specifier: 65) CP C' C did you INFL I' VP V' V wonder CP ____ C NP who INFL C' IP I' VP V' V kissed NP what This movement does not violate the subjacency constraint. It only crosses one bounding node. Now , we move the other wh-phrase. IP

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Chapter10 Wh-Movement 66) ___ C did you INFL I' VP V' V wonder NPi what C NP who INFL CP C' IP I' VP V' V kissed ti CP C' IP

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It is movement of this second wh-phrase that causes the violation. It can't stop off in the lower CP, because this position is already occupied by the other whphrase! Who is then forced to cross two bounding nodes, resulting in a subjacency violation. You might think that we could rescue this tree by simply ordering the movements differently, by moving the who-phrase first (thus allowing it to stop in the lower CP specifier.) then moving the what-phrase. Due to the existence of traces, however, this is also ruled out. Using the same Dstructure as before (64), let's move the who-phrase first. and lets do it in two steps so that it doesn't violate subjacency:

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284 67) CP ____ C did you INFL I' VP V' V wonder CP ____ C' IP

Sentence Structure: A Generative Introduction

C' C NP who INFL IP I' VP V' V kissed NP what

Since we only cross one bounding node at a time, each of these moves is acceptable. The sentence runs into trouble however when we try to move the other wh-phrase:

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Chapter10 Wh-Movement 68) NP who C did you INFL CP C' IP I' VP V' V wonder CP twho C twho INFL C' IP I' VP V' V kissed NP what

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There is nowhere to move this NP to. The specifier of the lower CP is filled by the trace of the who-phrase, and the higher CP is filled by the who-phrase itself! There is no landing site for this NP. Moving it into the trace would result in having a doubly filled specifier (containing both the trace and the what-phrase) for X-bar theoretic reasons we want to rule out this possibility. Just as you can't move an NP into another NP, you can't move a Wh-phrase into a trace. The net result of all of this is that you can't save the ungrammatical sentence *[who did you wonder what kissed] by moving the who-phrase first. No matter what you

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do, this sentence is going to be ungrammatical. Again, this is correctly predicted by the subjacency constraint. The arguments presented here are very complex, and the facts even more so. However, in the end a very simple pattern emerges with respect to islands. With the subjacency constraint, the range in which a wh-word can move is restricted. Apparent long-distance moves are the result of cyclic short movements. Cases where you can't make a short hop result in terrible ungrammaticality (such as the island violations).

3. CONCLUSION.
In this chapter, we looked at a third kind of movement transformation: Whmovement. This process targets wh-words and moves them to the specifier of CPs. This movement is triggered by the presence of a [+WH] feature in C. Movement is always from a case position to the specifier of CP (a non-case position). Wh-movement is not totally unrestricted; there is a locality constraint on the movement: subjacency. Movement must be local, where local is defined as maximally crossing only one bounding node. In the boxes, we also saw that in English (and English alone) there are two additional constraints on Whmovement. One is the doubly filled CP filter: In English you can't have both a Wh-word and an overt complementizer (although IC movement is allowed). The other is the that-trace filter, which rules out wh-movement from a subject position adjacent to an overt complementizer. Now that we have looked at three different kinds of movement, in the next chapter we are going to compare them and see what similarities and difference exist, and see if there is a way to further simplify the system.

IDEAS, RULES AND CONSTRAINTS INTRODUCED IN THIS CHAPTER i) Wh Movement Move a wh-word to the specifier of CP to check a wh-feature in C. Island:

ii)

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Chapter10 Wh-Movement A phrase that contains you, and that you may not move out of. iii) iv) Bounding nodes:NP and IP.

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Subjacency Condition: Wh-movement may not cross more than one bounding node (but it may cross one). Doubly filled CP filter (English only): * [CP WH that ] That trace filter (English only) * That tracewh

v)

vi)

FURTHER READING: (to be completed later) Chomsky 81 Rizzi 82 & others

PROBLEM SETS
(TO BE COMPLETED)

1) ENGLISH TRANSFORMATIONS
For each of the following sentences, give the D-structure and annotate it with arrows indicating what transformations have applied. Hint: be careful, since some of these sentences might have PRO in them.

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288

Sentence Structure: A Generative Introduction 1) How was the plot discovered by the authorities? 2) Which animals appear to have lost their collars? 3) Alan told me who wanted to seem to be invincible.

2) BOUNDING THEORY Why is the following sentence ungrammatical? *Whoj did [IP George try to find out [CP whati [IP tj wanted ti]. Draw a tree showing exactly the problem with this sentence. 3) IRISH Some dialects of English allow a kind of Wh-construction, where the base position of the wh-word is filled with what is called a "resumptive pronoun": This is the booki that the police are arresting everyone who reads iti In Modern Irish, this kind of construction is very very common. Modern Irish has two different wh-complementizers (notice that these are NOT wh-words, which go in spec,CP, these are C): aL, aN. The complementizer aL is found in sentences like (1). Sentence (a) shows a simple sentence without wh-movement, sentences (b) and (c) show two possible forms of the question (b) has the question moved only to an intermediate CP specifier. (c) has the wh-word moved to the topmost specifier. 1) a) Bonn fios agat i gcona go bhuailfidh an pobaire an t-amhrn] be.HAB know at.2.S always that play.FUT the piper the song 'You always know that the bagpiper will play the song' a) Bonn fios agat i gcona [CP caidi aL bhuailfidh an pobaire ti] be.HAB know at.2.S always whati COMP play.FUT the piper ti 'You always know what the bagpiper will play' b) [CP Cidi [IP aL bhonn fios agat i gcona [CP ti aL bhuailfidh an pobaire ti]] What comp be.hab know at.2.s always comp play.fut the piper "what do you always know the piper will play"

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Chapter10 Wh-Movement Now the distribution of the complementizer aN seems to be linked to the presence of a resumptive pronoun. Consider the following sentences (2b) and (3b) both show resumptive pronouns and the complementizer aN: 2) a) Bonn fios agat i gcona [CP caidi aL bhuailfidh an pobaire ti] be.HAB know at.2.S always whati COMP play.FUT the piper ti 'You always know what the bagpiper will play'

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b) [ CP Cn Pobaire j aN [ IP mbonn fios agat i gcona [CPcaidi a L bhuailfidh sj ti]] Which piper COMP be.HAB know at.2.S always whati COMP play.FUT he 'Which bagpiper do you always know what he will play' 3) a) T mthair an fhir san otharlann Be.PRES mother the man.GEN in.the hospital 'The mans mother is in the hospital' b) C who aN bhfuil ai mhthair san otharlann COMP be.PRES his mother in.the hospital 'Who is (his) mother in the hospital'

The aN complementizer and the resumptive pronouns are boldfaced in the above examples. Where precisely does the aN-resumptive strategy appear? In what environment do you get this construction 4)BINDING THEORY. In chapter 4, you were asked why this sentence causes a problem for the binding theory. Remind yourself of your answer, and then explain how the model of grammar we have suggested accounts for this fact. Which pictures of himself does Bill hate?

Andrew Carnie

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Sentence Structure: A Generative Introduction

5. ENGLISH
Do derivations for each of the following sentences. They may involve Head to head Movement, do-insertion, expletive insertion, NP Movement and Whmovement. 1) Car sales have surprised the stockbrokers. 2) Have you seen my model airplane collection? 3) Can you find the lightbulb store? 4) John was bitten by an advertizing executive. 6) It is likely that Siobhn will leave New York. 7) Siobhn is likely to leave New York 8) It seems that Susy was mugged. 9) Susy seems to have been mugged. 10) What did you buy at the supermarket? 11) You bought WHAT at the supermarket?!? 12) I asked what John bought at the supermarket. 13) What is likely for John to have bought at the supermarket 14) What is likely to have been bought at the supermarket?

Andrew Carnie