Oral Presentation for "A layering theory of the A/Ā‐distinction"

This talk was presented on 2021 April 8 - 11 at the 39th meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics.

Provided abstract:

Phrasal displacements pattern into two types, A-movement and Ā-movement, with puzzlingly disparate properties. I argue for an architecture in which the elements targeted by Ā-movement are added countercyclically, in what Thoms (2019) calls a layering derivation. This leads to a unified explanation of other A/Ā-properties, including the Ban on Improper Movement, the failure to feed case/agreement, the distribution of pied-piping and Principle C reconstruction.