Of Minds and Language (30 page)

Here X (
how
) cannot be related to its trace Y because of the intervention of Z (
who
), which has certain qualities in common with X, namely the fact of being a wh-operator. There is a wh-element that intervenes and hence the locality relation is broken. Whereas in cases of extraction from the declarative (22a), there is no problem because
how
can reach its trace as there is no intervener of the same kind.

The second concept, impenetrability, states that certain configurations are impenetrable to rules, so that, if “HP” is such a configuration, no direct local relation can hold between X and Y across the HP boundaries:

(24)    …X…[HP…H […Y…]…]…

Many locality principles embody the notion of impenetrability in different forms (island constraints, subjacency, CED, etc.). The most recent version of this family of principles is Chomsky's phase impenetrability (Chomsky 2004a): if linguistic computations proceed by phases, and H is a head defining a phase, then direct movement cannot take place from Y to X in (24).

This approach correctly predicts, for instance, that extraction of
how
in (22a) necessarily proceeds in successive steps: if you try to connect
how
directly to its trace without passing through the edge of the embedded clause, you will
run into the impenetrability effect, so a stepwise derivation yielding a representation like the following is enforced:

(25)    How do you think [ ___ C [ he behaved ___ ]]

In fact, there is good empirical evidence for the validity of this conclusion. For instance, Chung (1994) observed the obligatory wh-agreement on both the main and embedded verb in these kinds of cases in a wh-agreement language like Chamorro, which supports the view that movement must proceed stepwise here.

It is quite generally assumed that there is a certain division of labor between the two concepts of locality. Intervention accounts for weak island effects also in cases in which the element creating the weak island does not sit on the edge of a plausible phase (e.g., a negation marker, a quantificational adverb, etc.), a case that would not be covered by phase impenetrability; and, reciprocally, phase impenetrability accounts for the obligatory stepwise movement in cases like (25), in which intervention is apparently mute, as there is no visible intervener.

Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to explore the possibility of a unification of the different locality effects under a single concept. I would like to conclude by sketching out a suggestion along these lines. Apart from conceptual considerations, I believe there is an empirical argument in favor of a unitary approach. It is well-known that extraction across an intervener is selective, and the same kind of selectivity is found in the possibility of directly extracting from an embedded declarative, so it looks as if there is a generalization to be captured here.

The selective extractability across a wh-intervener is illustrated by pairs like the following:

(26)    a. ?Which problem do you wonder [how to solve ___]

           b. *How do you wonder [which problem to solve ___]

A wh-phrase like
which problem
is extractable from the indirect question (marginally in English), while if we reverse the two wh-phrases and try to extract
how
from the indirect question introduced by
which problem
, the result is totally impossible. According to one familiar analysis, the key notion is D(iscourse)-linking: the range of the variable bound by
which problem
is a set assumed to be familiar from discourse (we previously talked about problems A, B, and C, and now I want to know which one of these problems is such that…)
(Cinque 1990). So, cutting some corners, we could say that wh-phrases like
which problem
target positions which are featurally specified both as Q and as Topic, the latter specification expressing the familiarity of the lexical restriction; whereas wh-elements like
how
typically target positions uniquely specified as Q. So, (26a–b) have representations like the following (where “___” stands for the trace of the extracted element):

Then I will assume a version of relativized minimality, following Michal Starke (2001) essentially, according to which an element counts as an intervener in the crucial configuration … X … Z … Y… only if the Z fully matches the feature specification of X. That is to say, if this intervener is not as richly specified in featural terms as the target, no minimality effect is determined. Then, the wh-element
which problem
is extractable in (27a) because it targets a Q Top position, so that it can jump across the less richly specified pure Q element, under Starke's interpretation of intervention. By the same logic,
how
cannot jump across another wh-element in (27b), as its target position is not more richly specified than the intervener (in fact, its specification is less rich here), so that extraction is not possible in this case.

Now, back to the obligatoriness of stepwise movement in extraction from declaratives. What Chung has observed is that in a wh-agreement language like Chamorro, one finds the same selectivity in extraction from declaratives, as underscored by the obligatoriness or optionality of wh-agreement on the main verb:

(28)    a. Lao kuantu I asagua-mu ma'a' ñao- *(ña) [ __ [ pära un-apasi i atumobit __ ]]?

              ‘But how much is your husband afraid you might pay for the car?'

           b. Hafa na istoria I lalahi man- ma'a' ñao [pära uma-sangan tä'lu __] ?

              ‘Which story were the men afraid to repeat?' (Chung 1998, ex.53b)

The adjunct
how much
must be extracted from the declarative through stepwise movement, as shown by the obligatoriness of wh-agreement on the main verb, while the D-linked wh-argument
which story
can also be extracted in one fell swoop, without passing from the embedded C-system, as shown by the possibility of omitting wh-agreement on the main verb in (28b), under Chung's interpretation.

In conclusion, the same kinds of elements that can be extracted from an indirect question or other weak islands in languages such as English. are also extractable in one fell swoop from an embedded declarative in Chamorro. Let me suggest a way of capturing this generalization by relying uniquely on the intervention concept. We have proposed that the left periphery of clauses consists of a sequence of dedicated heads, so we have a partial cartography of the C-system like Top, Foc, Q, etc. These elements may appear in two possible flavors: either criterial and interpretable, or their purely formal, uninterpretable counterpart. Suppose that, under general assumptions on the fundamental structural uniformity of clauses, this system is always present in the left periphery of a complete clause. This system may remain silent in a sentence in which nothing moves, but it is always activated when movement to the left periphery takes place.

Let us see how, under these assumptions, we can capture Chung's observations on Chamorro. Suppose that we are extracting a non-D-linked wh-element like
how much
in (28a). Here movement must be successive cyclic because if we try to move directly from the embedded clause to the main complementizer system, we will be skipping a Q head in the embedded clause, the Q head (uninterpretable here, as the main verb does not select an indirect question) that we now assume to be part of the left periphery of every complete clause, thus violating relativized minimality. So, we must have stepwise movement here, first to the Spec of the uninterpretable embedded Q and then to the main complementizer system, as is shown by the obligatory wh-agreement on the embedded verb in Chamorro. On the other hand, if the extractee is a D-linked, topic-like wh-phrase like
which car
in (28b), this element will be able to target a complex Q Topic position in the main clause, hence it will manage to escape the lower pure Q position in the embedded clause, under Starke's formulation of relativized minimality.
³
So, we can capture the generalization that the same elements that can be extracted from weak islands are not forced to go successive-cyclically in case of extraction from declaratives. At the same time, we capture the necessity of successive cyclicity from the sole locality concept of intervention.

In conclusion, thematic and criterial positions delimit chains: there is no position lower than the thematic position, and no position higher than the criterial position in a well-formed chain. In between thematic and criterial positions there typically are other positions, as a consequence of locality, which forces movement to proceed stepwise. It is desirable on conceptual
grounds to try to unify the different notions of locality, and we have made the suggestion, based on empirical evidence, that the notion of intervention may be the relevant unifying concept.

L
AKA
: My question is very small. You said something about having faulty criterial projections available for computation, even when they are not necessary for interpretation, and you said that maybe they are there in spite of this. Since often they are phonologically silent as well, could you tell us your thoughts on what kind of positions these would be?

R
IZZI
: Yes, in fact it is a very important question. I think the driving intuition is the idea that clauses are fundamentally uniform. This had a critical role, for instance, in the analysis of non-finite clauses: they look very different from finite clauses, in that e.g. they often lack an overt subject position, but then it turns out that if we assume that they have the same structures as finite clauses, a lot of progress is possible in understanding their formal and interpretive properties. So, uniformity is the underlying rationale for assuming scope-discourse features in the left periphery of all clauses, and then locality effects such as the obligatoriness of stepwise movement can be derived from this assumption. So the question is: what does it mean that they may remain silent in a structure in which nothing has moved? It could be that they just don't do anything, they are just there and they get activated only if you try to move something out of the structure, essentially – i.e., they give rise to minimality effects. Another possibility, at least for some of the features (maybe the answer is not the same for all of the features), is that you may have things like in-situ Focus, for instance, at least in some languages. This could be expressed by some kind of pure Agree relation without movement into the periphery, but still with some kind of relation with a left-peripheral head. I don't think this can be said for all features, because for instance the Q feature clearly would not be activated in a declarative, normally, so there would be no way of extending the analysis along these lines. So there are a number of problems, and perhaps partially different answers for different features, but I would be assuming that the features are there, expressed in the left periphery, and that their presence is somehow activated when you try to move, much in analogy with what happens in French past participle agreement, in fact. You assume the agreement feature is there, inherently, on the participial head, but it is only when you move the object that it gets morphologically activated. So that is one of the models I have in mind.

P
IATTELLI
-P
ALMARINI
: I've just come from Amsterdam where I was lucky enough to sit in the morning in Mark Baker's course on Agreement, and he says that there are universals of hierarchical agreement, so you have for instance complementizers in agreement with the subject, and some in agreement with both subject and object. He also connected this rather rigid universal hierarchy with Case. How does your unification deal with the working of such parameters?

R
IZZI
: Basically, the system I talked about has to do with scope-discourse features, and that's a system that is relatively independent from the Case agreement system that Mark Baker refers to. Even though there are interesting interactions, for instance, again, with past-participle agreement, the case in which a property that looks like a Case agreement property shows up when you try to build a left peripheral configuration. But I would assume that in general the two systems are relatively isolated and function differently, so that whatever parameterization is to be assumed for the Case agreement system, that doesn't very directly affect the kind of system which I looked at. Of course, the scope-discourse featural system also involves parameters, which have to do with whether or not you pronounce certain left-peripheral heads, with the respective order of the heads in the left periphery (because you find some ordering differences there), and with whether or not you must, can, or can't move to the left periphery. All these parametric properties seem to be largely independent from the parameterization on the Case agreement system.