OVERT-COVERT MOVEMENT, COPY DELETION, AND CHAIN REALIZATION IN VALDÔTAIN PATOIS

Abstract

This dissertation investigates patterns of chain realization in Valdôtain Patois, an understudied Francoprovençal language spoken in Aosta Valley (Italy), which permits some degree of optionality in wh-fronting: wh-phrases can occur sentence-initially or clause-internally (CIwh-phrases). Using several diagnostics (including binding and parasitic gap licensing), I argue that CIwh-phrases are in fact the result of movement in narrow syntax with deletion of higher copies in the chain. All wh-phrases move to their scope position in narrow syntax. The optionality arises post-syntactically, when the decision of which copy to pronounce is taken. Therefore, Valdôtain Patois constitute new evidence of the underexplored phenomenon of movement in narrow syntax with deletion of higher copies in the chain or overt-covert movement (Bobaljik, 1995, 2002;Bobaljik and Wurmbrand, 2012; Bianchi, 2019; Amaechi and Georgi, 2020). I argue that the patterns of optionality in copy pronunciation are reflexes of successive-cyclic movement, and follow from a specific and partly free ordering of (internal) Merge and upward Agree operations. Moreover, I discuss the pragmatic licensing of wh-questions in Valdôtain Patois. CIwh- phrases are pragmatically marked: they act as strong presupposition triggers (Kripke, 2009; Abrusán, 2011; Abusch, 2010) and need contextual activation to be licensed. Therefore, we are faced with a very intriguing relation between the copy the grammar selects for pronunciation and the pragmatics of the question, which is problematic for more traditional models of grammar (e.g. the Y-model), where LF and PF are independent from each other and only get input from narrow syntax. In my analysis, I argue that these differences in use can still be accounted for by a purely syntactic feature-based account, with the pragmatic restrictions coming from an LF operator that restricts the possible answers to the question. Finally, I discuss the island-insensitivity of CIwh-phrases and their matrix scope. Using interveners and parasitic gaps licensing, I show that wh-phrases move to the matrix CP area, but choosing to pronounce a lower copy in the chain voids the island effect. I adopt Fox and Pesetsky’s (2005a) account of successive-cyclicity as a linearization requirement and argue that, in Valdôtain Patois, choosing to pronounce a lower copy in the chain lifts the linearization requirements for subsequent steps of movement to happen successive-cyclically through each phase edge (including the island edge), and the island violation never occurs.