On the Form of Chains: Criterial Positions and Ecp Effects. 0. Introduction

It is widely recognized that natural language syntax makes an extensive use of movement: elements are typically pronounced in positions different from those in which they receive some of their interpretive properties. On Wh-movement gave a major contribution to the study of the configurational properties of A’-movement, first and foremost its fundamentally local character, and its mode of application in recursive (successive-cyclic) steps. The identification of the basic configurational properties of movement was instrumental to abandon a construction-based conception of syntactic rules, and place syntactic analysis at a more abstract level, a more appropriate level for the identification of the basic computational ingredients of syntax. These configurational results also paved the way to a deeper understanding of the causes of movement, largely a contribution of more recent work, and of the Minimalist Program in particular. The present paper tries to follow this path backwards: it starts with a discussion of the functional motivations of movement, and then connects this level of analysis to the study of the form of chains, with special reference to the A’-system, and the formal principles which constrain possible chain configurations. The last part of the paper addresses another traditional research topic of A’-syntax, the subject-object asymmetries arising in A’-extraction, and the system of principles proposed in the first part is shown to provide an alternative to the classical analysis in terms of the Empty Category Principle.