Formalizing two types of mixed A/Ā movement
Tessa Scott
April 2021
 

Many scholars have argued that some instances of Ā movement include an interaction with some A feature, e.g. D (Aldridge 2004, 2008; Bossi & Diercks 2019; Coon et al. 2020; Bran-non & Erlewine 2020) and φ (Van Urk 2015, Colley & Privoznov 2019). However, the interaction between the A and Ā features is not the same in every case. Assuming that Ā movement is predicated on an Agree relationship, I analyze two types of mixed A/Ā Agreement. In the first type, one probe searches for the A and Ā features conjunctively, such that both features must befound together. With novel fieldwork data, I illustrate that this pattern is found in Ndengeleko (Bantu). The conjunctive pattern is challenging to capture from a standard, two-probe perspec-tive on mixed positions (following Chomsky 2001). Building on work on probes’ satisfaction conditions (Deal 2015a,b,2020), I show that the Ndengeleko pattern is best captured by a probe with a conjunctive satisfaction condition. In the second type of A/Ā movement, one syntactic head happens to host two probes (one A and one Ā). This pattern is found in Kipsigis (Bossi & Diercks 2019). The notion of conjunctive satisfaction allows us to capture agreement patterns which targets two features, which extends beyond mixed A/ Ā agreement. What emerges is a typology of mixed Agree operations in which features can be sought conjunctively, disjunctively,or independently. The empirical landscape places both conjunctive and disjunctive satisfaction as central to the Agree operation.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/005874
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: under review
keywords: Ā movement, mixed agreement, agree, satisfaction conditions, interaction/satisfaction, syntax
previous versions: v1 [April 2021]
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