The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

Appendix A
G-movement is A-movement
To complete the overall picture of the properties of G-movement I will address in this
appendix the question of whether G-movement is A-movement or A-bar movement. In
particular, I will argue that G-movement is A-movement in the sense that it creates a new
binding configuration. But first I will define what I mean by the A- versus A-bar distinction.
There has been disagreement in the literature about classifying scrambling as A-movement
or A-bar movement. The disagreement lies in how we define the distinction between A-
and A-bar movement in the first place. For approaches that base the distinction on Case assignment,
there are two basic options: Either (i) only a DP that is assigned Nominative can
move to Spec, TP since T assigns Nominative Case; thus, scrambling of a non-Nominative
DP is by definition movement to a position higher than Spec,TP and must be an instance
of A-bar movement (cf. for example Baker (2003)). Or, (ii) a position like Spec,TP may
be ambiguous between A-movement and A-bar movement depending on whether the DP
that moves there is or is not nominative (see, for example, Bonet (1990); Diesing (1990);
Mahajan (1990)).
On the other hand, it has been argued that A movement and A-bar movement behave
differently with respect to binding (Lebeaux (1988, 1998); Saito (1989); Mahajan (1990);
Chomsky (1993, 1995); Fox (1999); Lasnik (1999)). I will adopt here the binding distinction
over the Case distinction. I will classify as A-movement only movement, where the
pronounced copy is relevant for binding, and as A-bar movement movement where the pronounced
copy is not relevant for binding. 1 It is outside of the scope of this work to explain
why there should be such a difference between A- and A-bar movement. 2
In particular, I will follow recent proposals for Russian (see Lavine and Freidin (2002);
Bailyn (2003, 2004), among others) that movement to Spec,TP in Russian, even if it is
movement of an object, is always A-movement, i.e., it creates a new binding configuration.
1 I simplify the discussion here. It has been argued that A-movement can reconstruct as well (see, for example,
an overview in Iatridou 2002). The question of reconstruction is immaterial for the current discussion.
The only relevant difference is whether the pronounced copy counts for binding or not.
2 One option is that being A- or A-bar follows from a feature composition of a particular projection, not
from the type of a projection per se. See Nevins and Anand 2003 for an idea in this direction.
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