Feature 14. Weak crossover alleviation

found in question(s): 30a, 30b, 35a, 35b

Definition and illustration

It has been argued that VO- and OV-languages differ w.r.t. Weak Crossover (WCO) Effects under A'-movement. This describes the degradation that obtains if a phrase is A'-moved across another phrase containing a pronoun that the moved phrase binds, as in the following example from English:

(1)

No such degradation obtains if extraction takes place from a position above the pronoun:

(2)

There is thus a subject-object asymmetry. While VO-languages normally trigger such effects with object movement across the subject, OV-languages have been argued to lack this effect because of the possibility of intermediate A-scrambling across the co-indexed pronoun (e.g., Mahajan 1990). Since A'-movement takes place from a position above the pronoun, no WCO effects are expected. The following shows this for German:

(3)

Question 30/35 test for subject-object asymmetries. They are expected to obtain only in VO-languages, but not in OV-languages (if they have A-scrambling, feature 10):

Correlations

Question 30:

• Prediction 1: V-O → *OWH;i - [S pronouni]
• Prediction 2: O-V → OWH;i - [S pronouni]
• Prediction 3: A-scrambling (27c=1) → WCO-alleviation (30b=1)

Question 35:

• Prediction 1: O-V → OFOC;i - [S pronouni]
• Prediction 2: scrambling → OFOC;i - [S pronouni]
• Prediction 3: A-scrambling (27c=1) → WCO-alleviation (35b=1)

See also

This feature is closely connected to several others that explore the consequences of the presence/absence of A-scrambling, i.e., 10, 12, 16.

References