UCLA

The status of head movement has become controversial within current syntactic theory because its properties appear to be sufficiently dissimilar from those of phrasal movement that the two movement types must be governed by different mechanisms. Standard syntactic analyses within the minimalist framework seek to reduce this complexity either by relegating head movement to the phonological component of the grammar, or by reanalyzing purported cases of head movement as phrasal movement. In this thesis I propose a version of head movement in narrow syntax that is internally coherent, and I show that it is compatible with standard minimalist theories. Case studies of the syntax of Romance clitics demonstrate the potential utility of this approach, and I argue that the mechanisms proposed are likely to be computationally equivalent to better-studied versions of minimalist grammars (MGs) which do not include head movement. It remains an empirical question whether head movement is in fact required as a part of natural language grammars, but I conclude that there is no theory-internal reason why the possibility must be ruled out.