Title: Complementizer-trace effects: a crosslinguistic perspective
Speakers: E. Boef (ZAS Berlin) & Irene Franco (LUCL Leiden)
Venue: Lipsius/235b
Time: 15:15-16:30
Abstract
In this talk we present ongoing research on the well-known complementizer-trace (COMP-t) effect in the lower clause of long-distance A-bar dependencies (specifically relative clauses and wh-questions). The COMP-t effect, by which a finite declarative complementizer cannot be directly followed by a trace is illustrated in (1) for standard English.
(1) a. I know the man that you said (*that) t came here.
b. I know the man that you said (that) Mary will meet t tomorrow.
The COMP-t effect is certainly not a universal phenomenon, and its absence has traditionally been related to the availability of null subjects in a language. However, such a generalization does not hold universally, as can be seen in Icelandic in (2).
(2) a. Ég þekki manninn sem þú sagðir %(að) kom hingað.
I know man.the sem you said that came here
b. Ég hata manninn sem þú sagðir %(að) María ætlar að hitta t á morgun.
I hate man.the sem you said that Maria is.going to meet tomorrow
We provide a cross-linguistic typology of the COMP-t effect starting from Germanic, and extending to Romance. We show that besides the null subject parameter, other morphosyntactic properties play a role as well, such as the presence of V-to-C movement in embedded extraction contexts and D-morphology on the declarative complementizer.
We propose that the lowest C-head in the left periphery (Fin0) encodes a D-feature that requires checking in order to make the subject interpretable: in Germanic this checking requires move or merge to FinP, whereas in (some) Romance languages D can be checked by the subject in IP.
In extraction contexts (where COMP-t effects emerge), there are several ways to check D on FinP: (i) expletive/resumptive pronoun insertion; (ii) V-to-Fin movement; (iii) D-morphology on the complementizer. If none of these strategies are available in a language, the complementizer needs to be dropped in order for the D-feature to be checked higher up the A-bar chain. Put differently, the complementizer in this case acts as a sort of intervener.