Intermediate Adjunction with A-Movement

It’s widely assumed—often tacitly—that A-movement doesn’t move through intermediate positions where it doesn’t seem to check features (e.g. Baltin 2001). Chomsky (2001), however, proposes that all movement from inside the complement of v to a position above vP must pass through an intermediate position in the edge of vP. Within Chomsky’s proposal, this follows from the assumption that vP is a Phase. Fox (1999) and Nissenbaum (2000) argue on independent grounds that A-bar movement across vP must leave an intermediate trace in vP. In this squib, I give one argument in favor of intermediate adjunction to vP in the case of A-movement across vP. A well-studied case of A-movement is raising in English. With Chomsky (1995) and others, I assume that raising is movement of the subject from a position in the infinitival complement to the matrix Spec(TP) position to satisfy the EPP. This is illustrated in (1).