Kyle Johnson, U Mass

Building a Trace

Many accounts of movement invoke a special rule of semantic interpretation that causes the lowest position in the movement chain to be interpreted as a variable bound by the term in the highest position of the movement chain. I will examine a model of movement that moves away from that conception of its semantics. DP Movement on this alternative view puts together a garden variety definite description with another garden variety DP and merges the definite description in a position c-commanded by the position the other DP occupies. The way these two DPs are put together involves giving them a shared part -- that is, it uses multidominant phrase markers. I will demonstrate this alternative view of movement with an analysis of two case studies of Quantifier Raising. This is joint work with Danny Fox.