Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

through binding, reinterprets this idea in a perhaps more perspicuous way: members of an A-
Chain are not referential because it is only the Chain as a whole that is an Argument and
therefore referential. 67
We have seen that both in Chomsky's and in Rizzi's or Cinque's accounts something
special has to be said about A-Chains: Chomsky's theory is basically too restrictive and a special
device of extended Chain formation has to be adopted in order not to exclude licit A-movement.
Rizzi's theory is too permissive and a constraint on θ-role transmission has to be adopted in order
to force antecedent government on A-movement. Cinque's account, although close to Rizzi's, is
perhaps more appealing. In any case, it seems that the constraints on A-movement do not
trivially follow from a general theory of the ECP: something more or less ad hoc has to be added
to the theory, however plausible it may look.
Therefore, a principle like 0, which restricts the way AGR and the I-subject are
coindexed (hence the possibilities for A-Chain formation when it is required) can be welcome, as
far as it is independently motivated as a means of deriving Burzio's Generalization. I do not
contend that, given that 0 covers the ECP account for A-movement restrictions, the ECP is
necessarily not relevant for A-movement. Suppose it is. Then the prediction is that, since super-
raising violates both the ECP and 0, there are cumulative violations leading to ungrammaticality,
and thus super-raising will be worse in acceptability than A'-ECP-violations. It seems to me that
super-rasing violations are more radically unacceptable (I would say they are inconceivable
sentences) than A'-movement ECP-violations, even though the judgements are not clear because
both are severely ill-formed. There is, however, as far as I know, a contrast in ill--formedness
between extraction of adjuncts out of islands and that-trace effects: the latter are less severely
bad. 68 So there is a clear contrast between A- and A'-ECP violations:
67 Rizzi (1989-a) does not assume that extended Chains are
necessary, because he basically does not address the question of
non-minimality barriers. Cinque (1990) specifically rejects that
extended Chains are necessary, after having proposed that VP
(and IP) are not inherent Barriers.
68 In fact some speakers accept them: so it could be that for
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