ABSTRACT
The term for a position in the tree diagram which can contain the complementizer or other sentence-initial elements. It was shown in the Revised Extended Standard Theory ( transformational grammar, trace theory) that COMP serves as an escape hatch for movement transformations which move an element into the COMP of an embedded sentence and then into the COMP of the matrix sentence. This splitting up of a long movement into shorter movements makes it possible to circumvent locality constraints: for example, in Who [sdo you think [t [sPhilip loves t]] the object moves in two steps (indicated by the first trace t in COMP) so that subjacency is met at each step.
