Comparative Syntax of the Balkan Languages (Oxford ... - Cryptm.org

LAST RESORT AND V MOVEMENT 213c. Den exo dlavasl to vivlitNEC PF-1SG read the book"I have not read the book.'V-to-C exists in MGrk restricted to imperatives, as in (18) (Rivero 1994a):(18) Diavase to!read-IMP.2SG it•Read it!'MGrkThis process may look identical to the Big counterpart that raises the verb pastthe clitic in Cell ja! but its status is very different. The MGrk V raises to C tocheck a strong formal V feature, so the process is obligatory, which accountsnot only for clitic pronouns after V, as in (18) (*To diavase!), but also for thefact that negated imperatives are ungrammatical, as in (19) (Rivero 1994a,Rivero and Terzi 1995). These clear phenomena easily distinguish MGrk imperativesfrom their Big counterparts (Rivero 1994b).(19) *Min to diavase! MGrkRivero and Terzi discuss MGrk imperative movement from the perspective ofGreed in (20): that is, the imperative V raises to C to satisfy its own morphologicalproperties.(20) Principle of Greed(Chomsky 1994.7)Move raises a only if morphological properties of a itself would nototherwise be satisfied in the derivation.Translated into the later version of Last Resort as in (1) or (14), imperative verbmovement in MGrk applies in the syntax before spell-out and complies with thetwo clauses of the principle. That is, C as an abstract functional categorycontains a strong [-interpretable] formal feature that has a counterpart in the verbwith the phonological matrix (= F). Move in the computational system raises Vto the checking domain of C so that the feature on V can establish the requiredsuccessful checking relation with the feature on C as a sublabel of CP (= K).That is, imperative verb movement in MGrk applies to satisfy an internalrequirement of a functional category with an abstract formal feature, whilemovement in Blg applies to satisfy an external PF requirement of a functionalcategory with a phonological matrix, or the pronominal clitic.Thus, important syntactic differences between the present standard varietiesof two Balkan languages follow from the absence in MGrk of V-to-C rules thatescape Last Resort, since potential triggers for stylistic rules such as MGrk T in(17a) and D in (17b) do not impose structural PF requirements of the same kindas their Big counterparts. Another difference is that in MGrk V-to-C ultimatelyresponds not to PF but to LF requirements of V encoded as formal features, orits Logical Mood, which is not the case in Big.