On the Limits of Across-the-Board Movement: Distributed Extraction Coordinations

Abstract

The paper examines distributed extraction coordinations, in which different elements move out of conjuncts of a single coordination, as in Which book and which magazine did Mary buy and Amy read respectively, from a crosslinguistic perspective. A number of properties of such coordinations are discussed, which includes showing that they are also subject to the ATB requirement, which will shed light on the nature of the ATB phenomenon itself. It is also shown that there is a rather strong restriction on distributed extractions which confines such extractions to one context and completely excludes one type of movement, in particular head-movement, from participating in them. The higher coordination is shown to be formed during the derivation and to be semantically expletive. Distributed extraction constructions are also shown to have consequences for the proper analysis of a number of phenomena, including subject-oriented anaphors, right node raising, tough-constructions, agreement, and clausal structure. Regarding subject-oriented anaphors, the paper teases apart different approaches to subject-oriented anaphors based on constructions where different elements fill SpecvP and SpecTP (the latter undergoes agreement with T and the former binds subject-oriented anaphors).

Keywords

• across-the-board movement
• clausal structure
• coordination
• Japanese
• sideward merger
• Slavic