Successive Cyclicity in DPs: Evidence from Mongolian Nominalized Clauses

Abstract

A well-established property of long-distance movement is that it is successive-cyclic: phrasal movement of an XP from its base position to the one where it is pronounced takes place in a series of shorter steps. This punctuated nature of movement is often tied to phasehood. Phases are taken to be special in that they (a) may provide intermediate positions along the path of successive-cyclic movement where moving XPs can stop off and (b) force XPs to land in these positions by virtue of being opaque domains otherwise. By now, there is a growing body of evidence that long-distance movement stops off at the edge of each intervening CP (Henry 1995, McCloskey 2002, Torrego 1984) and vP (Bruening 2001, Rackowski and Richards 2005, Van Urk 2015) (see Citko 2014 for an overview). However, it is debated whether DP, another purported phasal domain, hosts escape hatches and allows intermediate movement through its edge (Bach and Horn 1976, Chomsky 1973, Cinque 1980, Gavruseva 2000, Giorgi and Longobardi 1991, Matushansky 2005, Svenonius 2004, Szabolcsi 1994, Tellier 1991). On the one hand, Complex Noun Phrase Constraint effects as in (1) may be taken to show that DPs lack an escape hatch.