Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka, 2017.
“The anti-locality signature of quirks of subject extraction.”
Presented at the Workshop on Quirks of Subject Extraction.
In many languages, one property of subjects that distinguishes them from other arguments is their uniquely high position in the clause. A’-extraction of the subject thus may uniquely run afowl of anti-locality constraints on movement, which ban movement which is too close (see e.g. Grohmann 2003, Cheng 2007, Erlewine 2016, 2017, Bošković 2016, Douglas 2016). Quirks of subject extraction that are driven by anti-locality constraints exhibit a particular "signature": (a) obviation when additional material is added above the subject, (b) its applicability to non-subjects that are exceptionally high, and (c) no correlation with other subjecthood properties such as case. Relevant examples from Highest Subject Restriction, subject anti-agreement, and complementizer-trace effects are discussed.