Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

Syntax Square 12/5 - Colin Davis

Speaker: Colin Davis (MIT)
Title: Don’t go over the edge: More constraints on stranding at edges
Date and time: Tuesday December 5, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: 

Moving phrases can sometimes leave material behind in phase edges they pass through, a phenomenon I term “edge stranding” (ES). Davis (In prep) shows that the sorts of elements capable of ES are predicted given Cyclic Linearization and a theory of movement as driven by c-command-constrained Agree. In this talk, I extend those findings to make predictions about when a given edge is available as a site for stranding. In essence, I predict that specifiers crossed by a phase-exiting movement step are unavailable for ES, hence the title of this talk. I focus on stranding at vP, which interacts with both subject movement and verb movement. This approach makes good predictions about ES in West Ulster English, Korean, and Japanese, but requires more work to understand facts from Polish and Dutch.