A Formal Foundation for A and A-bar Movement

Abstract

It seems a fact that movement dependencies come in two flavours: ”A” and ”A-bar”. Over the years, a number of apparently independent properties have been shown to cluster together around this distinction. However, the basic structural property relating these two kinds of movement, the ban on improper movement (’once you go bar, you never go back’), has never been given a satisfactory explanation. Here, I propose a timing-based account of the A/A-bar distinction, which derives the ban on improper movement, and allows for a simple and elegant account of some of their differences. In this account, ”A” dependencies are those which are entered into before an expression is first merged into a structure, and ”A-bar” dependencies are those an expression enters into after having been merged. The resulting system is mildly context-sensitive, providing therefore a restrictive account of possible human grammars, while remaining expressive enough to be able to describe the kinds of dependencies which are thought to be manifest.