On the syntax of possessor extraction

This paper investigates the structure of wh-possessive phrases and the constraints on extraction of wh-possessors across several languages, with a special focus on the differences between the Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German, etc.) and Hungarian, Tzotzil, and Chamorro. The main objective is to provide a parametric account for the crosslinguistic variation in extraction of prenominal DP possessors. The cornerstone of the proposal is the idea that the syntax of possessor extraction parallels the syntax of subject extraction in that possessors are required to extract in two steps (Szabolcsi, 1983/1994, 1994). The first step of possessor movement involves the checking of case and phi-features in the domain of Agr/D. The second step consists in moving to an escape hatch position, SpecDP. It is argued that in languages with overt wh-movement both steps need to take place in overt syntax for possessor extraction to be grammatical. It is shown that this is the case in languages such as Hungarian, Tzotzil, and Chamorro. Conversely, it is proposed that in Germanic, possessor movement to SpecDP is delayed until LF, therefore prenominal possessors cannot extract. The differences in ‘timing’ of possessor movement are argued to reside in the ‘strength’ of the Q-feature associated with the category D, a nominal complementizer, whose properties are parallel to those of the clausal Comp.