Feature 10. A- and A-bar-movement

found in question(s): 26a, 26b, 27a, 27b, 27c, 27d

Definition and illustration

Movement operations are traditionally divided into two types, viz. A- vs. A'-movement (see, e.g., Mahajan 1990). The former usually refers to movement operations to argument- or case-related positions, while the latter refers to discourse-marked operations targetting the left periphery of the clause. In the context of the OV/VO-debate, the availability of discourse-neutral reordering among arguments is important. Reordering operations in the clause that are not wh-movement or relativization are often referred to as scrambling. If they have the profile of A-movement, the operation is referred to as A-scrambling.

A-movement differs from A'-movement in that it can lead to new binding possibilities. An example from German is given in (1):

(1)

In the OV/VO-debate, it has been hypothesized that only OV-languages have A-scrambling (Haider 2010). This is investigated in question 27 (question 26 is just a sanity check to verify if one finds the usual binding effects, assuming that the subject asymmetrically c-commands the object and the possessor does not c-command out of the NP).

Correlations

Question 27 investigates binding between a quantified subject and a possessive pronoun inside the object, both in the base order SU>OBJ, then in the reordered version OBJ>SU. If the fronted object can bind a possessive pronoun inside the lower subject, we are dealing with A-scrambling. According to Haider (2010), A-scrambling should only be available in OV-languages, hence we expect the following correlations:

• OV → [DP-obj QP] [DP-Su poss]
• *VO → [DP-obj QP] [DP-Su poss]

See also

This feature is closely connected to several others that explore the consequences of the presence/absence of A-scrambling, i.e., 12, 14, 16.

References