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Object movement symmetries in British English dialects: Experimental evidence for a mixed case/locality approach

Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Anders Holmberg

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Abstract

This article reports on a judgment experiment intended to test a prediction of Anagnostopoulou’s (2003) seminal proposal concerning locality of A-movement in languages with Theme-Goal orders in active and passive contexts. Results from an experiment with native speakers of UK English show a significant cross-speaker correlation between scores for Theme-Goal orders in active contexts and Theme passives. The results nevertheless indicate a richer inventory of grammars than the two-dialect distribution entailed by a single parametric difference assumed in locality approaches. We propose that these data are best expressed on a modified version of GB case-based approaches to passive symmetry that models the availability of Theme-Goal orders in both passive and active contexts in terms of the merged position of the probes responsible for agreement on the internal arguments.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Haddican W, Holmberg A

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics

Year: 2012

Volume: 15

Issue: 3

Pages: 189-212

Print publication date: 01/10/2012

Date deposited: 10/01/2013

ISSN (print): 1383-4924

ISSN (electronic): 1572-8552

Publisher: Springer

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10828-012-9051-x

DOI: 10.1007/s10828-012-9051-x

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