Talk by Matthew Hewett (Georgetown University)

Abstract: The A-/Ā-distinction—a distinction between dependency types like raising-to-subject and wh-movement—has been a mainstay of modern syntactic theorizing since Chomsky (1981). Yet, despite widespread acceptance of the empirical correlates of this distinction, its theoretical underpinning remains a matter of debate. In this talk, I offer a novel perspective on understanding the A-/Ā-distinction by examining resumptive A-dependencies in Arabic (on which see Doron and Heycock 1999, 2010 and Sellami 2024). A-resumption challenges traditional positional approaches to the A-/Ā-distinction that predict a strict bipartition among position types (i.e. A-positions vs. Ā-positions, see Chomsky 1981, Mahajan 1990) because, as I show for the first time, A-resumption simultaneously displays a mixture of A- and Ā properties. For instance, A-resumption feeds agreement with T (=A-property) and skips over intervening DPs and finite clause boundaries (= Ā-properties). Moreover, A-resumption challenges recent approaches which derive A- and Ā-properties from the mechanics of movement (e.g. van Urk 2015, Safir 2019) because A-resumption involves binding without movement.

Instead, I develop an analysis of A-resumption and the A-/Ā-distinction based on the following two claims about structure-building features:

(1) There is a distinction between A- and Ā-features (see also van Urk 2015) which reduces to the category of the constituent targeted by that feature: A-features target (features of) DPs, Ā-features target (features of) QPs (in the sense of Cable 2010).

(2) There is a distinction between the featural triggers for external Merge and internal Merge (Hewett 2023; Elbourne 2024).

A-resumption is derived by externally merging a DP (and not a QP) in a non-thematic position and binding a pronominal variable in its scope. 

I demonstrate that the properties of A-movement, A-resumption, and Ā-movement are correctly predicted by this account—a success arguably not shared by its alternatives. From a broader perspective, my analysis supports the conclusion that Merge is feature-driven (i.e. driven by features of lexical items, see Adger 2003; Müller 2010; Zyman 2018) rather than free (see Chomsky 2015; Collins 2017; Safir 2019), shedding light on the nature of syntactic structure building.