‘Long’ WH-Movements and Referentiality

Abstract

It is argued that long wh-movement is restricted to constituents in strict referential use under a refinement of Luigi Rizzi's notion of referentiality that subsumes discourse linking as formulated by D. Pesetsky (1986). Rizzi's system is shown to be superior to that of Noam Chomsky's Barriers (1986) & is strengthened by making discourse linking an additional necessary condition for the assignment of a referential index. Binding chains permitting long wh-movement are possible only if both ends have identical referential indices; noun phrases (NPs) linked to a pronoun by c-command only are limited to successive cyclic wh-movement, as such NPs are nonreferential. Italian data of extraction from weak islands, quantifier scope reconstruction, & clitic left dislocation are examined; the possibility is considered that government chains & binding chains are mutally exclusive for NPs in A'-positions. 51 References. J. Hitchcock