Move a, scope, and relativized minimality

• Main Author: Nakamura, Masanori, 1966-
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 1992
• Subjects: Government-binding theory (Linguistics); Government (Grammar)
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=56651

This thesis deals with two aspects of operators within the framework of Government and Binding theory; (i) how they are assigned their scope, and (ii) how they are licensed. In an attempt to answer these questions, the relation of Move $ alpha$ (such as scrambling, NP-movement, and wh-movement) to the scope of operators and the licensing of wh-elements, negative polarity items, and adverbs are examined. It is argued that scope assignment is dictated by the Scope Principle and the Empty Category Principle. It is also argued that licensing of operators is determined by the Feature-Dependent Item Criterion. These principles and criterion make use of the concept of Government Theory Compatibility, which is built into Relativized Minimality. It is suggested that this concept should be characterized in terms of a set of lexical features. The approach advocated here accounts for the interpretive and distributional behavior of operators without recourse to parameterization of LF principles.