Movement, Wh-Agreement, and Apparent Wh-in-Situ
In current minimalist syntax (Chomsky 2000, 2001, 2004), movement is an operation that does not introduce a trace; rather, it leaves behind a complete copy of the moved element, with the result that structures formed by movement exhibit multiple copies of the moved element. In the phonology, it is determined which of these copies is phonetically realized, the typical case being that only the highest copy is pronounced (see Nissenbaum 2000).
This copy theory of movement allows for an option not available in trace theory, namely, that language-specific phonological constraints might dictate that the copy privileged for pronunciation is the lowest, as opposed to the highest. This possibility has been productively explored by Brody (1995), Groat and O’Neil (1996), Pesetsky (1997, 1998, 2000), Bosˇkovic´ (2001), Bobaljik (2002), and others (but see Nunes 2004 for a different view). Following this line of thought, we argue here that certain types of wh-in-situ instantiate ‘‘hidden’’ movement configurations that are created by wh-movement in overt syntax, followed by pronunciation of only the lowest copy.
Our evidence for these hidden movement configurations is supplied by the phenomenon of wh-agreement, which is widely believed to track wh movement in overt syntax, before Spell-Out. In brief, we show that there are languages in which the morphological patterns of wh-agreement occur in certain wh-in-situ contexts. Continuing to assume that this special morphology provides a record of the history of wh-movement before the derivation is shipped to PF, its occurrence in certain wh-in-situ constructions reveals that here too, movement has occurred in overt syntax. The only difference from overt wh-movement is that the lower rather than the higher copy is pronounced. Our proposal thus invokes the copy-plus delete theory of movement to integrate one strand of research on wh-in situ with research on the morphology of extraction.
