ABSTRACT
The major advantage of Baker’s approach is that it allows an account of certain constraints on morphological operations in terms of well-known and independently motivated syntactic conditions, notably the Empty Category Principle (ECP). The Head Movement Constraint, which prevents head movement from “skipping” intervening heads, can be derived from the ECP. The author introduces the modifications Rizzi and Roberts make to the theory of head-to-head movement. Rizzi and Roberts further elaborate the approach of Baker by assuming that head-to-head movement may be either substitution of a head into another head position or adjunction of a head to another head position. Cases of incorporation that involve genuine affixation are prevented from undergoing subsequent excorporation by the ECP, whereas other instances of incorporation, those apparently operative in cliticization and verb raising, may allow excorporation.
