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The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

MIT Linguistics Colloquium - Klaus Abels - Friday, Feb. 15

Klaus Abels
University of Tromso

“On Improper Movement”

Friday
February 15th, 2008, 3:30pm

Room 32-141

There will be a party in Klaus’ honor beginnning at 6:30pm at Pritty and Patrick’s place.

Abstract:

In this talk I propose to take a fresh look at the phenomenon of improper movement. How does (im)propriety of movement interact with remnant movement? How — with extraction from movement elements, i.e., with exceptions to the freezing principle? How — with a more articulated typology of movement relations than GB’s A/A’-distinction? On the basis of data largely from German and English, I reach the tentative conclusion that movement types must be ordered linearly.

If true, this gives rise to a more integrated and restrictive theory of movement than is currently available. I discuss one case, cross serial dependencies, where this restrictiveness is immediately apparent.