shortest move

A principle of the MINIMALIST PROGRAMME which requires a CONSTITUENT to move from its source to the nearest available position in a DERIVATION. It is one of the specific ECONOMY principles recognized by that programme. The principle is extended to include cases where one needs to decide which constituent can move where more than one is available. For example, in multiple WH-questions (e.g. You can give what to whom?), either wh-phrase is a possible candidate for movement to initial sentence position; but the one that moves is what, which is closer to sentence-initial position than whom is. In earlier versions of the minimalist programme, this principle was called the minimal link condition or attract closest.