Abstract
This article proposes a unified analysis of the that-trace and anti-that-trace effects in English. Unification of these two seemingly diametrically opposed effects remains an outstanding problem. It is argued that complement and relative clauses in English exhibit systematic variation in terms of how articulated their C-domains are. This, combined with Spec-to-Spec Anti-Locality, leads to a novel analysis of the anti-that-trace and that-trace effects. The analysis has interesting theoretical implications for phase theory and the mechanics of successive cyclicity, particularly concerning the position of the phase escape hatch, which is claimed to be the specifier of the complement of the phase head, and not the specifier of the phase head as in standard phase theory.
Keywords
that-trace effect, anti-that-trace effect, anti-locality, phase theory, successive cyclicity
How to Cite
Douglas, J., (2017) “Unifying the that-trace and anti-that-trace effects”, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1): 60. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.312
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