Title: To Unlock is to (Re)Merge: Locality Domains, Intervention and Minimal Compliance
Speaker: Ioannis Katochoritis (MIT)
Time: March 17, 2026, 1 pm – 2 pm
Place: 32-D461
Rackowski and Richards (2005) propose a Phase Unlocking operation: phases can be made transparent for extraction if they first Agree with a higher probe, which may then attract a goal from within the phase’s domain. If phases are by default potential movable goals that intervene (Abels 2003), then prior Agree with the phase allows the probe to ignore that phase and Agree with an embedded goal, as per Richards’ 1998 Principle of Minimal Compliance (PMC) in (1).
(1) Once a probe P Agrees with a goal G, P can ignore G for the rest of the derivation.
However, the Phase Unlocking program raises several questions: 1. Are both unlocking and successive-cyclicity required to escape a phase, or not? 2. How is unlocking compatible with the Phase Impenetrability Condition? 3. How does the PMC allow to ignore an Agreed-with locality domain? 4. Is unlocking an exceptional mechanism or a variant of a broader strategy to obviate opaqueness?
This talk is an initial attempt to address these questions by proposing the condition in (2), supported by novel data from Malagasy long-distance pivot extraction:
(2) Phase Unlocking requires (c)overt movement of the phase to the specifier of the probing head, before an embedded goal can subextract to an outer specifier of the phase’s landing site.
Hence, it is not mere Agree, but (re)merge of the phase with the probing head that makes it transparent for subextraction, in what yields a derived multiple-spec configuration. I will (try to) argue that (2), especially when extended to external merge to encompass c-selection via sisterhood, may reconcile unlocking with Phase Theory, structurally derive the PMC, the Weak PIC, certain A-movements and subextraction asymmetries, as well as unify syntactic strategies of obviating intervention.
The discussion will also be relevant to the recent view (e.g., Halpert 2019, Thivierge 2021, Halpert & Zeiljstra 2025, a.o.) that there are no designated phase heads with special status, and all phase-like locality effects should be reduced to Relativized Minimality (Rizzi 1990).