ABSTRACT
In recent work, Sportiche (1992) has suggested that an entire set of licensing conditions could be reduced to one, namely Spec-head licensing. As illustration, consider two major cases of syntactic XP-movement: wh-movement and NP movement. They represent movement to Spec positions (Spec of CP and Spec of AGRsP, Spec of AGRoP). This type of movement represents a way to license particular XPs, either because the XP is a wh-phrase and has to be licensed in Spec of CP, or because the XP needs Case. Spec positions thus typically function as "licensing" positions, and (overt or covert) movement represents the means to fulfill the licensing requirement: a particular XP is licit because it "counts" as being in the Spec position of a particular (licensing) head.
