Remnant Movement by Grewendorf Günther

Author:Grewendorf, Günther [Grewendorf, Günther]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2015-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

This is explained if we assume that Gross Minimality is still an instance of Minimality, and that it is constrained by the categorial feature of the moved element: when what moves is a PP, the presence of a c-commanding DP subject on the way to the foot of the chain can be ignored.82

At this point we need to introduce an important proviso. We are not saying that wh-movement cannot be probed in direct questions. We assume that it can. If it is probed, it triggers standard Relativized Minimality effects. However we maintain that in root questions movement of a wh-phrase can also be unprobed, triggering Gross Minimality effects. The awkwardness of sentences in (13) is an effect of the latter derivation. We assume that these sentences are clearly degraded, but are not completely ungrammatical, because of the availability of the alternative probed derivation (which, being constrained by Relavized Minimality, does not involve a locality violation). Of course we are well aware that it is not generally the case that an ungrammatical derivation interferes on the acceptability rate of a sentence which, in addition to being associated to the ungrammatical derivation, can also be derived grammatically. In fact, each grammatical sentence can be associated with many ungrammatical derivations and these do not interfere with its acceptability, as long as there is one acceptable derivation that produces the sentence as an output. The case of direct questions is however special, since the grammatical and the ungrammatical derivations differ only at the very end, so the completed sentence is associated to both of them. Informally speaking, there is no time for the ungrammatical derivation (the one where unprobed movement takes place) to be discharged in favor of the grammatical one (the one in which wh-movement takes place), since the movement of the wh-phrase is the very last step of the derivation. The presence of two derivations associated to the final output, one of which triggers a Gross Minimality violation, creates a degradation.

This discussion is relevant for another issue. As Poletto (1997) has stressed, in Italian there is a contrast in indirect questions between indicative and subjunctive clauses. While in subjunctive clauses there is no effect of subject intervention whatsoever (cf. 14 repeated as 18), there is still some vestige of that effect when the clause is indicative (19).

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