ABSTRACT
The nature of the “last resort” restriction on movement is the concern of this chapter. I argue that Chomsky’s (1993) Greed, which permits movement only in order to satisfy requirements of the moving item, is too strong; there are derivations where movement is solely to satisfy the needs of the position to which movement is taking place. There are two principal cases considered: movement to “Extended Projection Principle (EPP)” positions, and, in much more detail (covert) movement of the “associate” of the expletive there. With respect to the latter operation, following Chomsky (1995a), I argue that the relevant movement is just of the formal features of the associate, and to satisfy the agreement needs of the Agr head of the clause, there lacking agreement features of its own. This approach, as Chomsky notes, solves the scope problem of existential constructions – that the associate always takes scope in situ. Departing from Chomsky, I also argue that for all c-command purposes (binding, negative polarity item licensing, pronouns as bound variables), not just scope, the associate displays low behavior. And given this line of reasoning, I argue, following Koizumi (1993, 1995) that there is much more overt movement in English that is standardly assumed, with, in particular, nominal complements and Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) subjects raising overtly to [Spec, AgrO], with the verb raising overtly to a still higher V position. Further consequences and arguments are examined in Chapters 4 and 5.
