We propose a theory of head displacement that replaces traditional Head Movement and Lowering with a single syntactic operation of Generalized Head Movement. We argue that upward and downward head displacement have the same syntactic properties: cyclicity, Mirror Principle effects, feeding upward head displacement, and being blocked in the same syntactic configurations. We also study the interaction of head displacement and other syntactic operations, arguing that claimed differences between upward and downward displacement are either spurious or follow directly from our account. Finally, we show that our theory correctly predicts the attested crosslinguistic variation in verb and inflection doubling in predicate clefts.

This article argues for the existence of obligatory clausal DP shells: a structure in which an embedded CP is directly dominated by a projection of D. While this structure has been proposed in previous literature, it poses a theoretical problem, since according to one theory of well-formed extended projections, a D head can only occur in the extended projection of a noun (Grimshaw 1991(Grimshaw , 2000. A careful investigation of embedded clauses in Ndebeleverb-complement, noun-complement, and relative clauses-points to the conclusion that the grammar must allow base generation of direct clausal DP shells.For inspiring discussion and comments, I'd like to thank Karlos Arregi,

Abstract. We argue for a unified account of head movement and lowering in which lowering is in essence the covert movement counterpart of head movement. This proposal is supported by the existence of successive cyclic lowering (evidenced by relative prefix formation in Ndebele), in which complex heads built by lowering have the Mirror-Principle-obeying structure expected under a head movement derivation. It also predicts that lowering can feed head movement, giving the appearance of long head movement, which we argue is the case in Mainland Scandinavian V2. Keywords. head movement; lowering; Mirror Principle; Head Movement Constraint; V2; ellipsis; do-support; relative clauses; vowel coalescence; Ndebele; Danish 1. Introduction. Since at least Emonds 1970, two similar types of movements relating head positions (terminal nodes) have been distinguished in the literature. Their differences can be illustrated with the distribution of finite lexical (nonauxiliary) verbs in French and English. While in the former V moves out of VP to a higher (c-commanding) head position hosting finite inflection (represented here as T), lexical V in English stays in situ, and instead T lowers into V's VPinternal position, 1 as diagnosed, for instance, by the relative position of the finite verb with respect to adverbs adjoined to the left of VP (Chomsky 1957, Emonds 1970:211-226, 1978:65-68, Pollock 1989: 2

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Subject-verb agreement in φ-features has been treated as a relation between the subject and some functional category in the clausal spine (Infl, Agr, T). I argue that such severing of the Phi-probe from the verb is problematic for agreement patterns in Bantu languages and argue for a tighter connection between them. The crucial argument is the lack of consistent association of functional heads with agreement features, observed e.g. in compound tenses and aspectual-verb constructions in Bantu languages. The number and positions of Phi-probes in clausal structure are derived from the number and size of head-chains containing a verb.