Freezing effects and objects

Abstract

This paper is an investigation of freezing effects, that is, cases where an element (e.g. an object or a subject, or an element within it) is unable to move from a certain structural position. An account of the most prominent properties of freezing in Norwegian is followed by a comparative study of primarily English and Norwegian indirect objects, with important consequences for the general approach to indirect objects. Although recent analyses capture central properties of indirect objects, they fall short of accounting for freezing properties, seen here in terms of agreement properties, most notably Case agreement. It is shown that both subjects and indirect objects disallow sub-extraction in both English and Norwegian ; however, unlike English, Norwegian allows the indirect object to A-bar move. This relates to the question of whether Case is structural or inherent. As such, this paper offers a new argument in favor of Case as a central ingredient in deriving freezing effects. , and two anonymous JL referees. Thanks are also due to Cedric Boeckx for his support and constructive suggestions, and especially to Caroline Heycock, Norbert Hornstein, Howard Lasnik and Juan Uriagereka for all their valuable comments and for ensuring that my writing is much clearer than it would otherwise have been.[2] This is a construction similar to the was für construction in many Germanic languages.

Subject islands are different

“…This tension can also explain disparities in the acceptability of unaccusative subject islands reported in the literature. While we have not been able to find solid support for the more general freezing accounts of islands, we can offer new evidence in support of a more specialized, Caserelated conception of freezing as proposed by Lohndal (2011).…”

“…Case-based conception of freezing (Lohndal 2011 Although one has to be cautious comparing experimental data across languages, English unaccusative subjects appear to be stronger islands than their Russian counterparts. We suggested that the English results could be accounted for by a combination of two principles: that extraction targets the base position of a constituent, and that Case movement induces freezing.…”

“…GENERALIZED FREEZING: any type of movement makes a constituent opaque for extraction (Takahashi 1994, Stepanov 2007 b. CRITERIAL FREEZING: only movement to an A-bar position makes a constituent opaque; such movement does not block subextraction (Rizzi 2006(Rizzi , 2007Rizzi and Shlonsky 2007) c. FEATURE-DRIVEN FREEZING: only some types of movement, in particular movement to check Case, lead to opacity of the moved constituent (Boeckx 2008, Lohndal 2011). …”

On Movement out of Moved Elements, Labels, and Phases

“…The most explicit early statement of the effect goes back to Wexler 1977 andCulicover 1980, with early Minimalist works such as Ormazabal, Uriagereka, andUribe-Etxebarria 1994 andTakahashi 1994 providing a new perspective on the effect. Many other works have argued for generalizations along the lines of (1), also providing empirical evidence for it; see Ross 1967:160, 1974, Postal 1972, Huybregts 1976, Diesing 1992, Freidin 1992, Collins 1994, Müller 1998, Lasnik 1999, Stepanov 2001, Rizzi 2006, Boeckx 2008, Gallego 2009, Lohndal 2011, Uriagereka 2012, and Corver 2014, among many others.…”

Labeling and other syntactic operations

“…It has been observed that extraction out of moved syntactic objects is degraded; see, for instance, Ross (1967), Postal (1972), Wexler & Culicover (1980), Freidin (1992), Diesing (1992), Collins (1994), Müller (1998), Boeckx (2008), Gallego (2009), Lohndal (2011). Some definitions of freezing phenomena can be found in Ross (1967: 160, Frozen Structure Constraint), Wexler & Culicover (1980: 119, Freezing Principle), Diesing (1992: 128, Revised Extraction Constraint), Müller (1998: 22, Freezing).…”