EPP in Sluicing Constructions

초록

It is asserted in this paper that the EPP should be overtly satisfied in narrow syntax, in advance to sluicing. In a variety of West Germanic dialects--especially in Dutch, complementizer agreement (CA) and/or subject clitic (SC) (optionally) appear on the complementizer of embedded clauses. Arguing against Craenenbroeck (2004)'s idea that a subject, violating the EPP, is in its base position in Dutch sluicing construction, I claim that the absence of CA and SC endings in Dutch wh-sluices results from the blockage of the 'phonological' movement in Zwart (2001)'s sense. The reason why ∅-features of T are never manifested on C in sluicing construction is that sluicing itself bleeds the phonological counterpart of syntactic T-to-C movement. Then, what is redeemed in this construction is not EPP violation but non-application of phonological movement.

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