Current Minimalist approaches to syntax claim that languages simply vary in the distribution of overt movement. Some languages have overt wh-movement, or EPP effects, or movement of the verb to T, for example, while others do not, and these are basic parameters of cross-linguistic difference, which cannot be made to follow from any other properties of the languages in question. This book offers a theory of the cross-linguistic distribution of overt movement. The central claim is that the construction of phonological representations begins during the syntactic derivation, and that overt movemen ... More

Current Minimalist approaches to syntax claim that languages simply vary in the distribution of overt movement. Some languages have overt wh-movement, or EPP effects, or movement of the verb to T, for example, while others do not, and these are basic parameters of cross-linguistic difference, which cannot be made to follow from any other properties of the languages in question. This book offers a theory of the cross-linguistic distribution of overt movement. The central claim is that the construction of phonological representations begins during the syntactic derivation, and that overt movement is driven by universal phonological conditions. The conditions include one on the prosodic representations of syntactic relations like Agree and selection (Generalized Contiguity) and another on the relation between affixes and word-level metrical structure (Affix Support). The parameters differentiating languages are entirely a matter of prosody and morphology: languages differ in how their prosodic systems are arranged, in the number and nature of affixes appearing on the verb, and in the rules for word-internal stress placement. The resulting theory accounts for the distribution of wh-movement, head-movement of verbs and auxiliaries, and EPP-driven movement to the specifier of TP, in a number of languages. If the theory is correct, then a complete description of the phonology and morphology of a given language is also a complete description of its syntax.