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Annual Review of Linguistics

Volume 6, 2020

Successive Cyclicity and the Syntax of Long-Distance Dependencies

Abstract

Every major theoretical approach to syntactic structure incorporates a mechanism for generating unbounded dependencies. In this article, I distinguish between some of the most commonly entertained mechanisms by looking in detail at one of the most fundamental discoveries about long-distance dependencies, the fact that they are successive cyclic. Most of the mechanisms posited in order to generate long-distance dependencies capture this property, but make different predictions about what reflexes of successive cyclicity should be attested across languages. In particular, theories of long-distance dependencies can be distinguished according to whether they propose intermediate occurrences of the moving phrases (movement theories) or whether intermediate heads carry features relevant to displacement (featural theories). I show that a full consideration of the typology of successive cyclicity provides clear evidence that both components are part of the syntax of long-distance dependencies. In addition, reflexes of successive cyclicity are equally distributed across the CP and P edge, suggesting that these are parallel domains.

Keyword(s): extraction marking, feature percolation, intermediate movement, intermediate scope, movement, pronoun copying, stranding, successive cyclicity
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/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-012318
2020-01-14
2025-04-18
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/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-012318
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Successive Cyclicity and the Syntax of Long-Distance Dependencies
Annual Review of Linguistics 6, 111 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-012318
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-012318
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-012318
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