The Phasal Movement Hypothesis and Syntactic Freezing

The Phasal Movement Hypothesis and Syntactic Freezing

  This paper supports the phasal movement hypothesis (Chomsky 2005) by further motivating and extending the notion of EF movement. Six criteria of EF-movement are proposed and motivated for the extended notion of EF-movement. Specifically, clause-internal scrambling is shown to be EF-movement by claiming that EF-movement may be induced by EF of a non-phase head like T as well as by EF of a phase head like C, satisfying the six criteria of EF-movement. This natural extension of the notion of EF-movement not only solves some puzzles of scrambling but also contributes to the proper characterization of Agree. Criterion 4 of discourse effects for EF-movement is motivated in depth in terms of the syntactic freezing phenomena, for which it is shown that the D-Property Freezing Principle is motivated better than the existing syntactic freezing principles, the Criterial Freezing Principle (Rizzi 2004b) and the Inactivation Freezing Principle (Chomsky 2005). According to criterion 4, discourse effects rather than scopal effects are shown to be crucial property of EF-movement.