Defective Intervention Effects, Die!

The purpose of this discussion is to seek to clarify a number of issues surrounding the More challengingly, it examines critically a set of observations that Chomsky has used to establish the importance of defective intervention effects in syntactic computation, and argues that modifications in Chomsky's assumptions that are more or less independently justified obviate the need to recognise such phenomena. It is proposed that from a conceptual perspective, this is an unqualified good thing! Defective intervention effects require us to suppose that deleted syntactic objects can enjoy an afterlife, whereby they can continue to effect syntactic processes after their demise. Furthermore, it appears necessary to suppose that in certain circumstances, the demise is genuine, with deleted objects being totally inert for the functioning of subsequent syntactic operations. This requires Chomsky to explore conditions governing the annulment of defective intervention effects. As a consequence, two stages of explanation become necessary to account for why a deleted object behaves in a manner we might expect: a first stage, offering reasons for why it might not behave in this manner, and a second stage proposing an account of why these reasons are not operative in particular cases. The modifications proposed are, I will suggest, consistent with the fundamental principles underlying the Minimalist Program, a matter of some importance, as I do not intend what follows to be seen as attempting to undermine this approach to syntactic theory. Accordingly, the paper should be read as concerned, first and foremost, as an attempt to sketch an alternative implementation of minimalist ideas. The strategy pursued throughout is explicitly limited to consideration of examples utilised by Chomsky (1998, 1999). For these examples, I have attempted to work with the assumptions that Chomsky himself relies on, seeking to assess the detailed consequences of these assumptions for the examples in question. In so far as what emerge as weaknesses lead me to suggest modifications, I have not attempted to justify these modifications in a wider empirical context. That would be a considerable undertaking and must await another occasion. After Section 1, a brief introduction, Section 2 focuses on Chomsky's (1998) introduction and illustration of the need to recognise defective intervention effects. In Chomsky (1999) what we find is not so much further examples of the notion, but a set of cases where the phenomenon appears not to arise where we might expect it to. Of course, if there …