Movement-based approaches

Abstract

This chapter discusses how the Minimalist Program (MP) strives to model unbounded dependency constructions and island constraints, and discusses the empirical, theoretical and cognitive status of syntactic displacement (movement), as formalized in terms of Internal Merge. At the present time, modelling filler-gap dependencies via movement faces significant theoretical and empirical issues. There is no parsimonious account of successive cyclic movement in the MP because of the Triggering Problem, nor of convergent and cumulative filler-gap dependencies. Other problems concern island phenomena, which have been argued to follow from core architectural economy constraints, but which make incorrect predictions not only about islands, but also about unbounded dependency constructions more generally. Finally, the MP has also been difficult to reconcile with extant psycholinguistic evidence about language processing. All recent attempts to make the MP consistent with incremental sentence processing adopt phrase-structural information, and abandon movement altogether.