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Lecture 1: Trace Theory
ADVANCED SYNTAX
MOVEMENT

We have seen that things move :
Arguments move out of the VP into subject position
 Wh-phrases move out of IP into CP
 Verbs move from V position to I and C


But this can’t be the whole story:

It isn’t the case that anything can move anywhere
Besides looking at what can move we also need to
look at what can’t
 For a full picture, we also need to know why:


Things can and can’t move
THE THEORY OF MOVEMENT

In the next 3 weeks we will be looking at:
 What
happens to positions that things move out of
 What restrictions there are on movements
 Why things move
STRUCTURAL PRESERVATION

There is a central idea, proposed in the 1970s,
that movements do not change structures:
If not:
• any structure
could be
produced by a
movement
• there would be
no theory of
structure
THE PROJECTION PRINCIPLE

Another idea is that movements do not alter
lexical properties:
If not:
• There would be
no lexical
restrictions on
structure
• Words could
change
categories or
subcategories
MOVEMENT DOES NOT ALTER LEXICAL
PROPERTIES

An intransitive verb cannot become transitive by
something moving into its object position
He smiled (a smile) at Mary
 * He smiled Mary at


A transitive verb cannot become intransitive by
moving its object
He smiled a smile
(unergative)
 There arrived a letter
(unaccusative)
 Who did he meet
 * Who did he meet a meet
 * Who did there meet a man

OTHER THINGS MOVEMENT DOESN’T CHANGE

When a subject moves from one clause to another
(raising)

John seems [ to be intelligent]
the clause does not behave as though it has lost
its subject:

Clauses without subjects are ungrammatical
*

is intelligent
Only the subject of a clause can be the antecedent of a
reflexive pronoun in the object position of that clause
 John
thinks [ Bill likes himself]
 John seems [ to like himself]
OTHER THINGS MOVEMENT DOESN’T CHANGE
 When
a verb moves out of V into I, the VP does not
behave as though it has lost its head:
The heat made [VP the ice melt]
 The heat melt-ed [VP the ice]

 Phrases
without heads are ungrammatical
 The inflection can only take a VP complement
THE TRACE THEORY OF MOVEMENT
In the mid-1970s it was suggested that when
something moves, the position that it leaves does
not disappear and neither is it left empty
 A ‘trace’ of the moved element is left behind
 Traces have the same properties as the moved
element (category, reference, etc.)
 But they are phonologically empty

The heat melt–ed [VP the ice [V t] ]
 Who did he meet [DP t]
 He seems [IP [DP t] to be intelligent ]

A QUESTION
If traces are invisible, how do we know they are
there?
 There are three phenomena which seems to
support the supposition of traces:

 ‘Wanna’
contraction
 Doubling
 Resumption
‘WANNA’ CONTRACTION

When want is followed immediately by to, they
can be contracted to the form wanna in
informal spoken English:
I

want to hold your hand I wanna hold your hand
Obviously, this can’t happen if there is
something between want and to:
I
want you to hold my hand
*
I wanna you hold my hand
 * I you wanna hold my hand
‘WANNA’ CONTRACTION

Now consider:
 who

As want and to are adjacent, we might think
that they can contract – but they can’t:
*

do you want to hold your hand
who do you wanna hold your hand
This can be explained with trace theory: the
trace sits between want and to:
 you
want who to hold your hand
 who do you want t to hold your hand
WANNA CONTRACTION AND TRACE THEORY

If we did not suppose the presence of a trace in
these sentence, it would be difficult to account
for why wanna contraction can take place in
some cases but not others:
I
wanna hold your hand
 * who do you wanna hold your hand

From the surface, both these cases look
identical.
DOUBLING

Doubling is a phenomena found in some
languages where a moved element is
pronounced twice:
 Once
in the position it is moved to
 Once in the position it is moved from
DOUBLING

For example, in some dialects of Dutch and
Italian, a moved wh-phrase can appear twice:
 ci
alo
visto ci? (Italian dialect)
 whom has-he seen whom
 “who has he seen?”
 wie
denk je wie ik gezien heb? (Dutch dialect)
 who think you who I seen have
 “who do you think I have seen?”
DOUBLING

Some languages do the same thing with verbs
that move:
 In
Gungbe (Togo), to emphasise a verb it is moved
to the front of a clause – but it is also pronounced
in its normal position inside the clause too:
 ∂ù
Sená ∂ù ble∂ì lo
 eat Sena eat bread DET
 “Sena ATE the bread”
DOUBLING AND TRACE THEORY

Doubling is associated with movement
 It

is not just the repetition of words or phrases
One part of the doubled element is pronounced
in the ‘extraction site’
 Exactly
where the trace would be in cases with no
doubling

Doubling therefore appears to involve the
pronunciation of the trace
RESUMPTION
Resumptive pronouns are pronouns used in
positions from which movement has taken
place.
 In English we find them in two contexts:

 Left
dislocation
 In constructions that would otherwise involve an
ungrammatical movement
LEFT DISLOCATION

Left dislocation is similar to topicalisation
 Topicalisation
involves the movement of an
argument to the front of the clause:
 (Usually,
he likes animals but)
those hamsters, he won’t go anywhere near
 With
topicalisation the extraction site is left empty
LEFT DISLOCATION

With left dislocation the argument is moved to the front
of the clause, but the extraction site is not empty:



The pronoun in the extraction site is called a resumptive
pronoun
There has been much discussion of the structure of left
dislocation



That politician, I can’t stand him
Whether it involves a single clause
Whether it involves movement at all
If it is a single clause and it does involve movement,
then it seems that traces alternate with resumptive
pronouns

John, I despise (him)
RESCUING UNGRAMMATICAL MOVEMENTS

There are some constructions in which
movements produce ungrammaticalities
 which
candidate do you know [Bill voted for]
 * which candidate do you know [why Bill voted for]

The syntactic contexts (e.g. a clause which
begins with a wh-phrase) which prevent
movement are often called Islands
UNGRAMMATICAL RELATIVE CLAUSES

We know relative clauses begin with a wh-phrase (the
relative pronoun), though they are not always
pronounced


The movement of the relative pronoun is also blocked by
Islands


the man [(who) you gave the money to]
* the man who I wondered why you gave the money to
However, this ungrammaticality can often be improved
with a resumptive pronoun in the extraction position

the man who I wondered why you gave the money to him
RESUMPTIVE PRONOUNS AND TRACES

Resumption is a little like doubling, though:
Instead of the trace being pronounced as a full DP, a
pronoun is used instead
 Resumption is a more common phenomena (English
doesn’t have doubling, but it does use resumptive
pronouns, for example)


It has been claimed that a resumptive pronoun is
a partial pronunciation of a trace


The pronoun realises the category and the reference of
the trace, but not its full lexical content
Again, resumptive pronouns are visible traces
MULTIPLE MOVEMENT = MULTIPLE TRACES
A sentence can contain several movement and
a single element can move several times
 Each movement leaves behind a trace
 So we need to keep track of which trace
belongs to which moved element

INDICIES

To do this we use indices:
 [CP

- [IP - past [VP -en [VP who see]]]]
Movements:
Object moves to subject position
 Wh-phrase moves to specifier of CP
 Verb moves to passive morpheme
 Auxiliary moves to C (after insertion to support tense)


S-structure
 [CP
who1 was3 [IP t1 t3 [VP see2 -en [VP t1 t2]]]]
SUMMARY
Traces are (usually) unpronounced elements left
behind by movements
 They preserve the structure of the sentence and
the lexical properties of the elements in the
sentence
 We have phonological evidence of their existence

They can be pronounced
 They block certain phonological processes


They are indexed with the moved element