AbstractIn this paper, we subject to closer scrutiny one particularly influential recent argument in favour of the long-movement analysis oftough-constructions. Hartman (2011, 2012a, 2012b) discovered that experiencer PPs lead to ungrammaticality intough-constructions, but not in expletive constructions. He attributes this ungrammaticality to defective intervention of A-movement, a movement step crucially postulated only in the long-movement analysis. He takes this as evidence thattough-constructions are derived via long movement. We make the novel observation that a PP intervention effect analogous to that intough-constructions also arises in constructions that do not involve A-movement, namely pretty-predicate constructions and gapped degree phrases. Consequently, the intervention effect does not provide an argument for an A-movement step intough-constructions or for the long-movement analysis, but rather for the base-generation analysis. We develop a uniform account of the intervention effects as a semantic-type mismatch. In particular, we propose that what unifiestough-constructions, pretty-predicate constructions, and gapped degree phrases is that they all have an embedded clause that is a null-operator structure. Introducing an experiencer PP into these constructions creates an irresolvable semantic-type mismatch. As such, we argue for a reassessment of what appears to be a syntactic locality constraint as an incompatibility in the semantic composition.

Abstract: This paper argues that not all reconstruction effects can be reduced to a syntactic mechanism that selectively interprets copies at LF. The argument is based on the novel observation that some but not all reconstruction effects induce Condition C connectivity in Hindi-Urdu. We contend that Hindi-Urdu requires the hybrid approach to reconstruction developed on independent grounds by Lechner (1998, 2013, 2019), where both copy neglect (a syntactic mechanism) and higher-type traces (a semantic mechanism) are available as independent interpretive mechanisms. We show that the interaction of these two modes of reconstruction derives the intricate reconstruction facts in Hindi-Urdu.

Abstract: This squib presents three new arguments that the matrix subject in English tough-constructions cannot reconstruct into the embedded gap. The first two arguments reexamine data in the literature purported to show such reconstruction. Upon closer scrutiny, we argue that these data in fact involve short reconstruction below a modal or generic operator in the matrix clause, and not genuine long reconstruction into the embedded gap. The third argument is that property positions, which independently require reconstruction, are unable to host tough-gaps. This ban on long reconstruction in English tough-constructions follows without further ado on a base-generation analysis.