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Boundaries, Phases and Interfaces: Case studies in honor of Violeta Demonte
Edited by Olga Fernández-Soriano, Elena Castroviejo Miró and Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 239] 2017
► pp. 25–46

Syntacticizing blends

The case of English wh-raising

| Ghent University, FWO
| Ghent University, FWO

This paper aims at analysing English structures in which a wh-moved subject triggers agreement both in the clause it is extracted from and in the immediately higher clause. This pattern is only accepted by some native speakers, and it is also attested in corpora. Although the relevant structures could at first sight be analysed as extragrammatical ‘blends’, we propose that they are in fact part of certain speakers’ linguistic competence, and hence generated by the grammar of those speakers. Adopting the approach to subject extraction developed in Rizzi & Shlonsky (2007), we suggest that extracted subjects can exceptionally be ‘hyperactive’ (Carstens 2011), and thus take part in A-relations (case and agreement) in more than one clausal domain.

Keywords: subject raising, A-movement, A’-movement, amalgam, agreement, Subject Criterion, incorporation, relativization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The empirical data
    • 2.1The core properties
      • 2.1.1Double agreement
      • 2.1.2The selecting predicate
      • 2.1.3Only wh-movement
      • 2.1.4Subject restriction
      • 2.1.5That-trace effect
      • 2.1.6The biclausal restriction
  • 2.2Some similar patterns in English
    • 2.2.1Accusative long wh-moved subjects
    • 2.2.2Wh-agreement with long moved subjects in American English
    • 2.2.3DP/wh-asymmetries and ECM
  • 3.Cartography and the Subject Criterion
    • 3.1SubjP, the Subject Criterion and subject extraction
    • 3.2Subject extraction from English finite clauses
      • 3.2.1Licit extraction
      • 3.2.2The unavailability of wh-raising
  • 4.The grammar of wh -raising
    • 4.1Hyperactivity and T2-agreement
    • 4.2The matrix SCrit
    • 4.3Deriving wh-raising: Taking stock
    • 4.4The subject restriction
    • 4.5The biclausal restriction
  • 5.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.239.02dan
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den Dikken, Marcel
2018. Secondary predication and the distribution of raising to object. Acta Linguistica Academica 65:1 ► pp. 87 ff. DOI logo

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