The Specificity Condition and the CED

Author(s): Anoop Mahajan

Source: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Summer, 1992), pp. 510-516
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178785
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510 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

Koopman, H. and D. Sportiche(1988) "Subjects," ms., Uni-

versity of California,Los Angeles.
Kuroda,S.-Y. (1988) "WhetherWe Agree or Not: A Compar-
ative Syntax of Englishand Japanese,"LingvisticaeIn-
vestigationes 12, 1-47.
Rizzi, L. (1986)"On ChainFormation,"in H. Borer, ed., Syn-
tax and Semantics. Vol. 19: The Syntax of Pronominal
Clitics, Academic Press, New York.
Rosen, C. (1988) The Relational Structure of Reflexive Clauses:
Evidence from Italian, Garland, New York.
Sunier,M. (1988) "The Role of Agreement in Clitic-Doubled
Constructions," Natural Language and Linguistic The-
ory 6, 391-434.
Zagona, K. (1982) Government and Proper Government of Ver-
bal Projections, Doctoral dissertation, University of
Washington,Seattle.

THE SPECIFICITY CONDITION 1. The Specificity Condition

AND THE CED
Chomsky (1973) and Fiengo and Higginbotham (1981) note the
Anoop Mahajan,
following contrasts:
University of California,
Los Angeles (1) Who did you see pictures of?
(2) *Who did you see the picture of?
The main fact that we will concern ourselves with in this
squib is that in general movement is blocked out of a specific
object, though it is possible out of a nonspecific object. Thus,
to (1) and (2) can be added the following examples, taken from
Eng (1991):
(3) *Who did John read [every story about e]?
(4) *Who did Mary steal [that picture of e]?
(5) *Who did Mary make [most movies about e]?
(6) Who did John read [a story about e]?
(7) Who did Mary make [many movies about el?
I will attempt to provide a syntactic explanation for this phe-
nomenon, which is often called the specificity effect.

2. On Object Case Marking

Chomsky (1991) suggests that object Case marking parallels
subject Case marking in that both subjects and objects are Case-

I wish to thankMurvetEnc, Kyle Johnson,Peggy Speas, and an

anonymousLI reviewerfor their comments.This squibdevelops some
ideas discussed in chapter2 of Mahajan(1990), where it is suggested
thatspecificobjects(showingobjectagreement)in Hindimove to a VP-
externalposition at S-Structure.
 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 511

markedby Agr. That is, Case markingis a reflex of agreement

in general. This is shown in (8).

(8) AgrP-S

Spec
subject NP
Case Agr-S
TP

Spec

T
AgrP-O

Spec
object NP
Case Agr-O
VP

Mahajan(1990; 1991)argues that in a languagelike Hindi

that has overt object agreement,there is evidence to support
S-Structureobject movement of the sort that Chomsky sug-
gests. However, as (9) and (10)illustrate,such objectmovement
is restricted to specific objects; nonspecific objects cannot
undergosuch movementandthereforenever show objectagree-
ment.1
(9) Raam-ne kitaab parhii.
book
Raam-ERG(M) (F) read (PERF F SG)
'Ram read the book.'
(10) Raam ek kitaab parhegaa.
Raam(M) a book (F) read (FUT M SG)
'Ram will read a book.'
Onthe basis of evidence of this sortfromseverallanguages,
Mahajan(1991)suggests a theory of Case assignmentto object
NPs that distinguishesbetween the positions in which specific
and nonspecific object NPs receive a structuralCase. Under
that view, nonspecific objects receive a structuralCase under

' There is evidence that the object NP in (9) is specific whereas

the one in (10) is not. If we replacethe subjectNP in (9) and (10) with
a quantifierlike sab 'everyone', the objectin (9) necessarilytakes wide
scope over this quantifier.This is not the case in (10). This correlates
with the well-knownpropertyof specific NPs that they tend to take
wide scope (see Fodor and Sag (1982);also see Enc (1991)for a dis-
cussion of this issue).
512 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

government by the verb, whereas specific objects receive a

structuralCase from Agr-O either under government or by
Spec-headagreement.This is shown in (11).
(11) a. AgrP-O

NP
Case
agreement Agr-O

b. AgrP-O

Agr-O XP

Case_+Spc

c. VP

Vf

V NP

Case.v
In (1la) NP agrees, gets Case from Agr, and must be specific.2
In ( lib) NP gets Case from Agr but does not agree and must
be specific. In (1ic) NP gets Case from V, does not agree, and
must not be specific.
Since Englishhas no object agreement,the cases that need
to concern us here are (1ib) and ( llc).3 The claim then is that

2 I suggest that the specificity requirementon NPs Case-marked

by Agr follows from the fact that Agr, being a pronominal,is specific.
An NP Case-markedby a pronominalAgrmustmatchAgrin specificity
features.This recalls the MatchingPrincipleof Borer(1983)and Sunier
(1988)for clitic doubling.Underthe view that clitics are like agreement
elements (see Sunier(1988),Mahajan(1991)),it now becomes possible
to have a unifiedaccount of the specificityrequirementfor both clitic
doublingand object agreement.
3 An anonymousreviewerpoints out that the statusof XP, and in
particularwhat occupies the Spec XP position in (1Ib), needs to be
clarified.Since in this squibI amnot takinga positionon the D-Structure
positionof subjects, one possibilityis that Spec XP is the Spec of VP
position (this proposal is similar to the one suggested in Koopman
(1989);see also Koopmanand Sportiche(1991)).Underthis approach,
subjectswill be generatedabove Spec AgrP-O.It shouldbe noted that
SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 513

even in English, specific objects get their structuralCase in the

configuration(1lb), that is, after movementto a Spec position
governedby Agr. V-movementto Agr at S-Structurepreserves
the SVO word order in English.45

3. The SpecificityConditionand the CED

Accordingto the proposaloutlinedin (1lb), specific objectswill
occupy what constitutes a "subject" (= Spec) position in the
phrase marker.Any extractionsfrom such NPs will therefore
constitute a Conditionon ExtractionDomain (CED) violation
(more specifically, a Subject Conditionviolation; see Huang
(1982), Chomsky (1986)). If we assume, following Chomsky's
(1986)treatmentof CED effects, that a non-0-governedprojec-
tion (where 0-governmentis understoodto requiresisterhood)
functions as a barrierfor extraction,then the Specificity Con-
dition violations are accounted for because a specific NP will
not be a sister to its 0-role assignerafter movement.The same
is not true of nonspecificNPs, which in the unmarkedcase will
occupy a complementposition that is a sister position to the
verb. Therefore,extractionout of nonspecificNPs is possible.
This would then account for the contrasts noted in (I)_(7).6

this proposaldoes not directlyconflictwith VP-internalsubjecttheories

such as those of Fukui and Speas (1986), Kitagawa(1986), Kuroda
(1988),and Koopmanand Sportiche(1991)since these theoriesdo not
take AgrPprojectionsinto accountand thereforeit may be possibleto
maintainthat the subjectis generatedin a positionlower thanthe Spec
IP position but higherthan the AgrP-Oposition. Anotherdistinctpos-
sibilityis to allow for VP-internalsubjectsin a literalsense and assume
that the Spec positionin (1lb) is a Spec of an empty head (see Larson
(1988),Pesetsky (1990)).The thirdpossibilitywould be to treatthe rel-
evant NP positionin (1lb) as an adjoinedpositionandto allowfor Case
markinginto an adjoinedposition (see Kayne (1989)).This possibility,
if correct, would requirea slightmodificationof my proposal.It would
be outsidethe scope of this squibto arguefor any one of these positions,
and the centralclaim that I am makingwill not be directlyaffectedby
the choice. I thankPeggy Speas for her commentson this issue.
4 This idea differs from the one suggested in Chomsky (1991),
whereobjectsin Englishmove only at LF. My claimhereoverlapswith
a similarsuggestionmadeby Koopman(1989)andJohnson(1992).The
differencebetween my proposaland theirsis essentiallythat I am sug-
gestingthat an object moves to a positiongovernedby Agr only if it is
specific. Nonspecific objects are barredfrom undergoingthis move-
ment. Mahajan(1990) suggests that this accounts for differencesbe-
tween scramblingof a specific object (object shift) and the scrambling
of a nonspecificobject.
5 I am assumingthat modals are generatedhigherthan AgrP-O,
which entails that they will always precedethe frontedverb as well as
the moved object.
6 For some alternativetreatmentsof specificityeffects, see Bowers
(1988), Erteschik-Shir(1973), and Horn (1974). Diesing (1990)has in-
dependentlydevelopedan accountof similarfacts followingthe frame-
work outlined in Heim (1982). Her account is independentof the S-
514 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

This treatmentof the Specificity Conditionpredicts that

languages that do not display Subject Condition (subpartof
CED) effects will not show SpecificityConditioneffects either.
This is the case in verb-finallanguageslike Hindi that do not
have SubjectConditioneffects, as shown in (12).7As expected,
Hindi does not show any Specificity Conditioneffects either.
This is shown in (13).8

(12) Kiskii tum socte ho ki kitaabcorii ho gayii?

whose you think that book stolen was
(Lit.) 'Whose do you think the book was stolen?'
(13) Kiskii tum socte ho ki Mohan-ne kitaab
whose you think that Mohan-ERGbook (F)
curaaii thii?
stolen (F) be (PAST F)
(Lit.) 'Of whom do you think that Mohan stole the
book?'

StructureCase and agreementfacts that I discuss and requiresspecific

NPs to undergoquantifierraisingat LF. A conditionthat prohibitsop-
eratorsfrom bindinga trace withinnon-properlygovernedNPs at LF
(conditionon trace binding)would then account for SpecificityCon-
ditioneffects. I will not go into a detailedcomparisonbetween the ap-
proachpresentedin this squibandthe one developedin Diesing(1990).
I will merelynote that positingan LF conditionon tracebindingwould
have the effect that LF CED effects shouldbe visibleeven in languages
like Chinese, somethingthat does not appearto be true (see Huang
(1982)).Second, positingsuch an LF conditionwill still not accountfor
the well-formednessof Hindi sentences like (13) and the Germansen-
tence noted in footnote 7, both of whichwouldbe incorrectlyruledout.
7 It is unclearwhat the relevantdifferencebetween Hindiand En-
glish could be with respect to the SubjectCondition.We will assume
here that the subjectpositionis not a barrierin Hindi. This may follow
either from the special nature of Agr in Hindi (in this respect Hindi
would be similarto Chinese; see Huang(1982))or from the role that
directionalityof governmentplaysin the syntaxof a particularlanguage
(Hindi being verb-finalas opposed to English, which is verb-medial).
The latterapproachrecalls Kayne's (1983)Connectednesstreatmentof
extractionphenomena,which prohibitsextractionsfrom a left branch
in a verb-mediallanguage.Kayne (1983, fn. 2) speculatesthat extrac-
tions froma left branchmay not be prohibitedin a verb-finallanguage.
This appearsto be true. Some evidence that directionalitymay be in-
volved comes from German,another verb-finallanguage,which (ac-
cording to Bayer (1990)) also violates the Specificity Condition, as
shown in (i).
(i) Uber Chomskyjhabe ich [den letzten Film e,]
about Chomsky have I the last film
leider nicht gesehen.
unfortunatelynot seen
8 This indicatesthat the
SpecificityConditioncannot be a purely
semanticcondition,as is sometimesargued(see Erteschik-Shir(1973)).
SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 515

4. Conclusion
I have suggestedthat a modificationof Chomsky'sapproachto
object Case markingcan help reduce the SpecificityCondition
to the CED. This entailsthat the SpecificityConditiondoes not
have an independentstatus in the theory, which appearsto be
desirablegiven that it does not seem to be universal.

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