The paper aims firstly to account for what causes the optional derivations in the environment of a lexical DP, either subject or object, which is a well known phenomenon exhibited by locative inversion constructions, quotative inversion constructions, comparative inversion constructions, and phrasal verb constructions. However, the optional word orders are not allowed when pronouns are involved in the concerning constructions. Accordingly, the second aim is to investigate why pronouns block the optional derivations; the subject-(auxiliary) verb inversion cannot take place with a pronoun subject, and a pronoun object cannot be placed after a particle in phrasal verb constructions. The final goal is to propose a unified account which can uniformly apply to both the optional subject-verb inversion constructions and the optional object shift of phrasal verb constructions.
1. Introduction
2. The Distribution of Optional Derivations
3. Blocking Optional Derivations
4. Economy Principle: Move a light element
5. A Unified Account
6. Conclusion
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