A feature-inheritance approach to root phenomena and parametric variation

Abstract This work concerns itself with Root Transformations (RT), specifically discussing the RT/non-RT nature of topic fronting in English, Japanese, and Spanish. We claim that this fronting is in principle compatible with all types of embedded clauses regardless of whether the selecting predicate is factive/non-factive, or whether the selected proposition is asserted/non-asserted. Languages vary on how freely they allow topic preposing in various types of complements. Adapting an intervention account of RTs in which an event operator moving to Spec,CP intervenes with other types of operations, we claim that two A′-movements compete for the same syntactic position in certain types of clauses. We account for the variation in the distribution of RTs and non-RTs across languages by the options made possible by inheritance of discourse features. In Japanese and Spanish, the topic feature may be inherited by T from C, so that some instances of topic fronting are to Spec,TP. This movement does not compete with the operator that has moved to Spec,CP, so no competition arises. In contrast, the topic feature stays in C in English, so that topic fronting and the operator movement to CP vie for the same position. This then triggers a competition effect in many constructions such as factives where operator movement has occurred.