The syntax literature has overwhelmingly adopted the view that Condition C reconstruction takes place in wh-chains for R-expressions contained within arguments, but not within adjuncts of fronted wh-phrases. At the same time, this empirical picture has been questioned by various authors. We undertake a series of grammaticality surveys using Amazon Mechanical Turk in an attempt to clarify the empirical picture regarding reconstruction for Binding Condition C. We find absolutely no evidence of an argument–adjunct distinction in reconstruction for Binding Condition C. Neither arguments nor adjuncts reconstruct for Condition C. We suggest that those speakers who report such a contrast (linguists, primarily) are following a pragmatic bias, and not Condition C. While we do not find reconstruction of dependents of fronted NPs for Binding Condition C, we do find reconstruction of fronted PPs. That is, the NP complement of a fronted P must reconstruct for Binding Condition C. The literature also finds reconstruction of NP complements of verbs and adjectives. This means that fronted Ns are special in not requiring reconstruction of their arguments and adjuncts. We suggest that, syntactically, arguments of Ns are treated as adjuncts: semantic arguments simply adjoin in the same manner as true adjuncts. Syntactic adjuncts can be left out of lower copies in chains, something that we suggest follows from a left-to-right syntactic derivation plus an economy condition on copying.

We reexamine cases of coordinated elements that do not match in syntactic category. We show that these fall into two types. The first type includes predicates, modifiers in the clausal domain, and such modifiers apparently coordinated with arguments. We argue that these do not actually involve coordination of unlike categories. The second type involves coordinated arguments of different categories. With this type, unlike the first, noninitial conjuncts may violate selectional restrictions. To account for these violations, researchers have typically posited a special status for the first conjunct in a coordinate structure, such that it alone can determine the category of the coordinate phrase. We show that such accounts are untenable. First, the final conjunct can be what matters for selection, if it is closest to the selecting or selected element. Second, category mismatches are not free, but are extremely limited and exactly match those observed in ellipsis and displacement. This calls for a uniform account of these mismatches, not one specific to coordination. We spell out such an analysis, in which displacement, ellipsis, and coordination permit certain categories to behave as certain other categories through their effects on null syntactic heads.

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Quantifier float (Q-float) is a phenomenon in which a quantifier is separated from the nominal it associates with (The cookies will all have been eaten up by then!). The phenomenon has received two major analyses: stranding and adjunction. The stranding analysis argues that the associate moves leftward out of a complex constituent that contains both it and the floating quantifier. The adjunction analysis considers floating quantifiers to be adverbial adjuncts. This paper investigates Q-float in Arabic and shows that neither of the existing accounts perfectly captures the facts. Adopting Ott's (2012;2015) analysis of split topics and Q-float in German, the paper proposes that in Arabic, a floating quantifier and its associate are merged together in a particular syntactic position as a set of autonomous phrases; the associate moves out of the set to allow the set to be labeled and integrated in the structure. It will be shown that this labeling analysis captures many of the peculiarities of Q-float, among which are two apparently conflicting facts: the locality restrictions on floating quantifiers and, in many cases, the impossibility for the floating quantifier and the associate to have formed a continuous constituent at any stage of the derivation. The facts and analysis presented contribute to the debate on whether floating quantifiers mark the positions of lower copies of displaced nominals (np traces in pre-minimalist terms), providing an argument that, at least for Arabic, the answer is 'yes'. It also provides additional support for the labeling framework that emerged from Chomsky (2013) and related work.

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