T. Daniel Seely

Labeling by minimal search: Implications for successive-cyclic A-movement and the conception of the postulate “phase”

We argue that Chomsky’s (2013) ‘‘label identification by minimal search’’ explains ‘‘obligatory exit’’ from intermediate positions, not only in the successive-cyclic Ā-movement phenomena that Chomsky analyzes, but also in (phase-internal) successive-cyclic A-movement. Moreover, it does so by employing simplest Merge and third-factor minimal search for label identification. Our extension of Chomsky’s analysis to A-movement operates without any appeal to Merge-over- Move or to lexical arrays or subarrays. This in turn renders the concept ‘‘phase’’ itself no longer necessary in analyzing the core cases of illicit A-movement, shown to reduce to labeling failure. Implications of this result and the nature of the long-standing evidence for strict cyclicity are discussed.

Head-head relations in Problems of projection

Abstract Chomsky 2013 argues that D of an external argument in Spec TP is in principle as close to C as T is. Assuming that “inversion depends upon locality independent of category,” T and D should therefore compete with each other as candidates for raising to C in English questions, yet only T so raises. Chomsky takes this to indicate that the external argument is in its base position, Spec, vP, when C is merged. Our paper argues that this approach cannot generalize to account for why only V+v and not D of an external argument can raise to T in V-v-to-T languages. It also has major difficulties accounting for a well-known asymmetry: T raises to C only in English non-subject questions. We conclude that head-movement is sensitive to categorial and other features of lexical items, contra the claims of Chomsky 2013.