On Accelerating and Decelerating Movement

Derivations in the minimalist programm (MP) frequently encounter competition between elementary operations. A way in MP to resolve such competitions is to assume preference principles, the most prominent being “Merge before Move” (Chomsky 2000). Assmann, Georgi et al. (2013) discuss competition between Agree and Move. ere, either Agree must be procrastinated in favor of Move or the other way round. Procrastination, in turn, suggests constraint violability and thus an optimality theoretic account. While it is, in principle, possible to formulate an inviolable constraint such that it mimics the ešects of two interacting violable constraints, such a move is arguably conceptually unattractive as it requires the constraint in question to be complex. Moreover, if it turns out that there are scenarios where the general preference expressed by the constraint is exceptionally reversed, then it has to be complicated further, shedding serious doubt on its plausibility. In this paper, we argue that scenarios of exceptional preference reversal do indeed exist. In optimality theory, they are captured straightforwardly by assuming a higher ranked constraint that brings about the change.