This paper argues that postverbal wh-phrases in Malagasy, Tagalog, and Tsou are subject to the same general constraint on marking of trigger arguments. It shows that the trigger is not necessarily definite or specific; the nonoccurrence of wh-phrase trigger in postverbal position therefore cannot be reduced to the definite/specific constraint on the trigger argument. There exists evidence, little noticed in the literature, that wh-phrase trigger is sometimes possible in postverbal position. I claim that postverbal wh-phrase trigger is possible just in case it can be marked independently in the same fashion as postverbal non-wh-phrase triggers.
Four superficially different types of Tagalog relative clauses (head-initial, head-final and internally headed and headless) are argued to have the same D CP underlying structure and derivation. It is suggested that the head noun raises to SpecCP (Vergnaud 1974. French relative clauses. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation; Kayne 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) leaving a copy of itself in the original position. Evidence for movement of the head in all four types comes from their showing the same behavior as overt movement observed elsewhere. Their superficial differences are the results of deletion of the copy in the TP or the copy at the landing site. The TP in the CP is not fronted, contra Aldridge (2003. Remnant movement in Tagalog relative clause formation. Linguistic Inquiry 34. 631-640), but remains in-situ. It is shown that the position of the (overt) head noun coincides precisely with that of the absolutive argument in the declarative. The types of relative clauses in English, Quechua, and Japanese are suggested to be related to independently available options of deleting different copies of the head noun. Two consequences that follow from the head-raising analysis proposed here are that the null operator analysis (Chomsky 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Browning 1987. Null operator constructions. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation) for relative clauses cannot be correct, and that languages other than the SOV ones may have internally headed relative clauses as well, contrary to Cole (1987. The structure of internally headed relative clauses. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5. 277-302).
This paper argues that the distribution of adverbs in A-not-A questions bears on the base-position of an abstract morpheme Q and is subject to the same general locality condition on variable binding. It claims that adverbs that have semantic relations with an element in the clause or the clause itself mostly allow inference and interact syntactically with the A-not-A operator, whereas those having no such relations do not. It shows that the lack of syntactic interaction between temporal and locative adverbs on the one hand and the A-not-A operator on the other follows directly from their being related to the world and time coordinates of the formal interpretive model.
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