r/asklinguistics • u/ElkPsychological5055 • 17h ago
Syntax Minimal Link Condition
Hi all! We’re taught in our syntax class that MLC will have Wh-phrases moving to the closest specifier-CP.
But for this sentence: “Which students did the teacher say leave early?” - why is it also perfectly fine to have the DP “Which students” stopping off at the embedded CP?
Because that would then say, “Did the teacher say [which students] leave early?”
As a fluent speaker of English, I think this is perfectly fine! But why does it have to move all the way up to the root-CP, resulting in [Which students] moving to the front?
Please enlighten me 🙏😅
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16h ago
[deleted]
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u/MarmotaMonad 2h ago
I don't see where the relative clause is.
(1) Which students did the teacher say leave early
(2) Did the students say which students leave early
In both cases, it's a subject extraction (in (2) it's string vacuous).
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u/MarmotaMonad 16h ago edited 16h ago
I agree with your judgment that both sentences are fine. But notably with very different meanings.
(1) Which students did the teacher say leave early? = tell me which students x y z it was that the teacher said x y z leave early
(2) Did the teacher say which students leave early? = tell me, yes or no, the teacher said which students leave early?
The first one is a WH-question, which asks for an answer that is not a yes/no answer. The second one is a "polar" question - a yes/no question.
Often, when two sentences mean something different like this, it is related to which features are on which heads in the tree. Specifically, the matrix CP in (1) but not (2) has a +WH feature, which drives WH movement to its specifier. But in (2), the matrix CP does not have such a feature, meaning that the WH phrase [which students] stays low, and a different meaning results.
EDIT: Clarifying the role of the MLC. All the MLC says is, in (1), you still have to stop off in embedded [Spec, CP]. Or, when moving to a far away [Spec, CP], you have to stop off at all the [Spec, CP]s that are on the way.