T에서 C로의 이동에 대한 최소주의적 분석

This paper is concerned with why and how T-to-C movement is triggered in interrogative sentences. It is well-known that wh-movement must be accompanied by T-to-C movement. The immediate questions regarding this phenomenon include what feature attracts T to C and in what way wh-movement is related with T-to-C movement. I argue that T-to-C movement takes place on account of the two conflicting demands: the demand that the sentential operators like Q need to occur in the sentence-initial position and the demand that they need to take a predicative argument. The two demands contradict each other, since the sister of the sentence-initial position is C, while C is not predicative. I propose that English Grammar utilizes T-to-C movement in an attempt to resolve this conflict. It will be claimed that this proposal enables us to explain T-to-C movement not only in interrogative sentences but also in many other types of sentences like negative sentences, conditionals and optatives. Furthermore, I am going to argue that this line of approach enables us to explain the embedded/matrix clause asymmetries and the subject/non-subject asymmetries.