Movement and Derivation: Eliminating the PBC

Downward movement and sideward movement necessarily leave a trace that is not c-commanded by the head of the chain and hence violate the PBC. Under a strict interpretation of the PBC, head movement is also banned because the head of the chain in head movement cannot c-command its trace. Likewise, remnant movement would be never permissible, because it leaves an unbound trace within a remnant category (cf. Müller 1996). Importantly, there has been no uncontroversial case of downward and sideward movement attested in human language. It is much less controversial, however, that human language apparently does allow remnant movement in some restricted context, as well as head movement. Thus the PBC in the form of (1) needs to be reconsidered. The aim of this paper is to show that there is some redundancy between the scope of the PBC and the derivational theorizing in the minimalism, and that the PBC should be eliminated and can be reduced to a derivational property of the computational system, CYCLIC SPELL-OUT, on both empirical and conceptual grounds.