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Verb-First Clauses in Icelandic, Successive Cyclic wh-Movement and Syntactic Binding

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Problems in Syntax

Part of the book series: Studies in Language ((STUDLANG))

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Abstract

In their important 1978 paper, Kayne & Pollock argue that Stylistic Inversion in French provides independent evidence for the successive cyclic movement hypothesis argued for in Chomsky (1977) and references cited there, on the basis of island phenomena. Bresnan (1975) and Grimshaw (1975), on the other hand, show that both in the comparative construction in Modern English and in relative clauses in Chaucerian English, the successive cyclic wh-movement hypothesis runs into trouble and that in these constructions, unbounded deletion should be allowed. Nevertheless, both comparative subdeletion and presumably relativization in Chaucerian English obey the “island” constraints that the successive cyclic wh-movement hypothesis was meant to explain. The same state of affairs obtains in Irish, according to the analysis given in McCloskey (1979), in Kikuyu as argued in Clements (1979), in Old English (Allen (1977)), and Old Icelandic (Maling (1976)).

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Liliane Tasmowski Dominique Willems

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© 1983 Communication and Cognition

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Zaenen, A. (1983). Verb-First Clauses in Icelandic, Successive Cyclic wh-Movement and Syntactic Binding. In: Tasmowski, L., Willems, D. (eds) Problems in Syntax. Studies in Language. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2727-1_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2727-1_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9691-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-2727-1

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