Scrambling through the Looking Glass: Two Types of Movement across Weak Islands

Zhiyu Mia Gong

Keywords: A'-movement, long distance scrambling, wh-islands

Abstract: Long-distance scrambling (LDS) exhibits paradoxical properties that challenge a unified theory of A'-movement. While many argue that LDS is exceptional and not driven by A'-features (Saito 1989), others argue that it should be subsumed under A'-movement (Miyagawa 2006). I propose that these seemingly incompatible views point to two distinct types of LDS that may co-exist internal to a single language. By analyzing LDS in Khalkha Mongolian through the lens of weak islands, I identify two varieties: (i) ordinary LDS, driven by a scrambling feature Σ (Grewendorf & Sabel 1997) and targeting the matrix AspP, and (ii) wh-LDS, driven by A′-features and targeting a higher functional projection FP associated with an A′-probe. Due to their distinct syntactic triggers, wh-LDS exhibits Relativized Minimality (RM) effects when launching from weak islands, similar to English wh-movement, whereas ordinary LDS shows no such sensitivity. These findings (i) suggests LDS is both cross-linguistically and intra-linguistically heterogeneous and (ii) supports the emerging view that all instances of phrasal movement involve Agree and Merge, with differences in movement type arising from the specific features involved in Agree (van Urk 2015).

Submission Number: 81