Minimality Effects in Syntax · The MLC and Derivational Economy ...

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114 Gisbert Fanselow The contrasts in (71) are related to the fact that English expresses information structure distinctions in a way different from scrambling and topicalization. (71) shows that English bans crossing wh-pronouns primarily in those contexts in which it offers an alternative way of making a lower (wh-) phrase more topical than the higher one. For subjects and objects, this alternative way is the passive construction. The conditions of information structure that license counterparts to (71a’) in German are therefore not inexpressible in English. Rather, they imply the use of a passive. (71b-c) illustrate that one can front both the direct and the indirect object in a multiple question, but the options (related to information structure) are linked to the dative alternation. (71b) is unobjectionable because it is in line with the MLC. The MLC-violation in (71b’) would have to be motivated on grounds of information structure (who being more focal than what), but in a dative shift construction, the inner object (who) must be more topical than the outer object. Therefore, (71b’) is ill-formed on pragmatic grounds. (71c) is grammatical since it conforms to the MLC. The information structure requirements that would license the MLC-violation in (71c’) are those that trigger the dative shift alternation. (71c’) is illicit because the proper way to express its information structure is (71b). In an OT-framework, one may feel tempted to explain the data in (71) by assuming a grammatically visible competition between active and passive sentences, or between the constructions V NP PP and V NP NP at the point when the MLC is evaluated, but a more conservative solution is also at hand: we can assume that the information structure constellation needed to override the MLC in (71a’, b’, c’) cannot be linked to the construction in question in English (because of the structural alternatives passive and dative shift). Other constellations do not yield a crossing effect. English has no special way of expressing information structure interactions of objects and adverbs and adverbial PPs. There being no restrictions on the distribution of topicality, the information structure needed to override the MLC in either (72a) or (72a’) can linked easily with to the sentences, so that both ways of formulating the multiple question are wellformed. (72) Constellations without crossing effects a. what did you see where? a’. where did you see what? b. to whom did you give what? b’. what did you give to whom?
The absence of a contrast between (72b) and (72b’) forces upon us the assumption that the construction V NP [to NP] comes in two varieties: to may be a dative marker, or the head of a PP. If information structure restrictions favoring the dative alternation affect the former version only, the absence of a contrast is predicted. Alternatively, we may assume that wh-PPs may always cross wh-DPs. For English, the approach just sketched implies that the topical nature of in situ subjects in multiple questions must be the blocking factor for sentences with wh-pronouns in subject position. (73) a. who arrived when? b.*when did who arrive 5. Concluding Remarks In the theory defended here, the MLC is a constraint that applies cyclically in a derivation: if more that one category can be attracted to a certain position P, only the one closest to P can move. However, the MLC cannot prevent a movement operation from applying if that movement step is inevitable in generating the (partial) LF-representation in question. Given that considerations of information structure play a role in this context, the fact that the MLC decides between syntactic objects with the same partial LF only renders the principle quite weak in the domain of operator movement. The predictions are quite different for head movement, if head movement does not have semantic effects. Consequently, the two syntactic objects in (74) (with A and B being heads attracted to X) do not yield different partial LFs, because they differ in the location of the phonetic matrix of A and B only. In the model advocated here, this is equivalent to saying that nothing will prevent the MLC from blocking (74b). (74) a.[[ X A ] [ … A … [… B … ]]] b.[[ X B ] [ … A … [… B … ]]] The MLC and derivational economy 115 Phrasal A-movement has semantic consequences in many theories, and the pragmatic implications of different options of filling the subject position are obvious. The current proposal therefore implies that MLC-effects should be influenced by considerations of interpretation in the domain of A-movement as well, i.e., one should be able to observe apparent MLC-violations. This prediction is borne out. E.g., Hestvik (1986) observes that both objects can
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Page 21 and 22: (33a) and the locality requirements
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Page 39 and 40: (65) Multiple questions in Yiddish
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