On Feature Strength: Three Minimalist Approaches to Overt Movement

1999/04/01 by Howard Lasnik · 5 citations
Social Sciences · #Language and cultural evolution

paper · doi:10.1162/002438999554039

crossref issued 1999/04/01 · crossref published 1999/04/01 · crossref published-print 1999/04/01 · openalex publication_date 1999/04/01 · crossref created 2002/07/27 · crossref deposited 2021/03/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29

Abstract

Procrastinate (Chomsky 1993) favors covert movement; therefore, when movement is overt, it must have been forced to operate “early” by some special requirement, one that Chomsky codes into “strong features.” I compare Chomsky's three successive theories of strong features and argue that two ellipsis phenomena, pseudogapping and sluicing, provide evidence bearing on the nature of strong features. I argue that movement or ellipsis can rescue a derivation with a strong feature, and I conclude that PF crash is relevant either directly, as in Chomsky 1993, or indirectly, as in the theory presented in Chomsky 1995a augmented by the multiple-chain theory of pied-piping (especially as interpreted by Ochi (1998)).

Citations

• Some notes on economy of derivation and representation
• Sluicing and logical form

Cited by

• Now I’m a Phase, Now I’m Not a Phase: On the Variability of Phases with Extraction and Ellipsis
• Stripping and Topless Complements
• Constraining Head-Stranding Ellipsis
• Salvation by Deletion in Nupe
• Causation, Obligation, and Argument Structure: On the Nature of Little v