ABSTRACT
The assumption that the representation in ( 6b) contains an empty category makes it possible to account for a number of (apparently) unrelated facts:
b. *Whoi did you think that ei left
In (7a), the pronoun he binds2 the empty category left by whmovement; if the trace left by wh-movement must be locally bound by an element in a non-argument position, like Comp, then an account for the ungrammaticality of (7a) follows immediately. If such an empty category must be locally identified and the complementizer that is not sufficient to identify the empty category in the subject position of (7b ), then an account of the ungrammaticality of (7b) also follows (see the discussion of the ECP in Chapter 1 ). The assumption that syntactic representations contain empty categories can carry a great deal of explanatory weight, providing a unifying property for a variety of apparently different phenomena.
