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the ECP could be simplified to always (and only) require antecedent government. The apparent
insensitivity of objects (and internal Arguments) to the requirement of antecedent government
with A'-movement can be derived from the following assumptions:
- A'-movement allows adjunction to VP as an escape hatch.
- intermediate A'-traces can be deleted at LF.
As a consequence of the preceding assumptions, the object of read in 0.a) can adjoin to
the embedded VP as a first step, and then move on:
(43) [ VP t' [ VP read t ] ]
In the relevant structure 0, t' will be able to antecedent-govern the trace in object position
(t); t' cannot in turn be antecedent-governed, because its antecedent (or the next intermediate
trace) is too far, but since it can be deleted, no ECP violation takes place.
In the case of A-movement, adjunction to VP is not allowed because it would be a case
of improper movement: therefore 0.b) is excluded as an ECP violation, hence its strong
ungrammaticality. Thus far, Chomsky's solution is highly appealing, since a very simplified
version of the ECP (which only and always requires antecedent government) is resorted to in
order to cover both A- and A'-movement. A problem arises in connection with A-movement,
though. If nothing else is said, even the simplest cases of licit A-movement would be excluded:
since VP is, crucially, a barrier, a simple passive or unaccusative construction is predicted to
violate the ECP:
(44) John was [ VP elected t ]
Since the object cannot adjoin to VP in its way to the subject position, VP will be an
unescapable barrier. Chomsky's solution to the problem consists in assuming that V and INFL
are coindexed and an Extended Chain can be formed of the form (John, INFL, V, t), in which
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