Specificity Condition Revisited

This paper aims to explain the well-known asymmetry of extractability between specific and non-specific NPs. This paper starts with a short review of the previous studies regarding the Specificity Condition from both theoretical and empirical point of view. With the criticism that the condition is nothing but a descriptive generalization which must be deductively derived from deeper principles, this paper explains it in terms of phasehood and its role in the possible domain of extraction. Assuming the dynamic definition of phases (den Dikken 2006, 2007 and Bošković 2012a, 2012b), this paper shows that the ban on extraction from specific NPs is due to violation of the cooperative requirement of the PIC and the Anti-locality. This paper extends the solution to further counterexamples of the Specificity Condition. To be specific, Grimshaw's (1990) notion of event participants are shown to be operative in building additional XPs inside nominals and this addition will change the dynamics of interacting syntactic principles including the PIC and the Anti-locality thereby explaining the counterexamples.