SYNTACTIC

MOVEMENT
Presented by: Samitah Ejaz
X BAR THEORY
X-bar theory makes the simple proposal that every phrase in every sentence in every language is organized
the same way. Every phrase has a head, and each phrase might contain other phrases in the complement
or specifier position.

The components of a phrase described by the X bar theory are as follows:

i) The head: In linguistics, the head or nucleus of a phrase is the word that determines the syntactic
category of that phrase.

ii) Complement: A complement is the word (or words) needed to complete a meaning.

iii) Specifiers: Specifiers are short, frequently occurring functions words. For example, “the’ or “not”.
DISCONTINUITY AND
SYNTACTIC MOVEMENT
When a word or phrase is separated from the word or phrase it modifies in a way that prevents a direct
connection between them without causing crossing lines in the tree structure, this is known as a
discontinuity in linguistics. Depending on the particular theory of syntax, different terms are used to
indicate discontinuities.

Syntactic movement is the means by which some theories of syntax address discontinuities. Movement was
first postulated by structuralist linguists who expressed it in terms of discontinuous constituents or
displacement. Some constituents appear to have been displaced from the position in which they receive
important features of interpretation.

It is a syntactic rule for moving a piece of structure within the tree, giving rise to dis- placement situations
where a word or constituent appears in some position other than where we would expect it.
TYPES OF MOVEMENT:
A MOVEMENT AND A BAR
MOVEMENT
A Movement A Bar Movement

Argument movement (A movement) displaces Non-argument movement (A-bar movement

a phrase into a position in which a fixed
grammatical function is assigned, such as in
movement of the object to the subject position
in passives.
For example, “John ate an apple”, turns into:
“The apple was eaten by John.”
or A'-movement), in contrast, displaces a
phrase into a position where a fixed
grammatical function is not assigned, such as
the movement of a subject or object NP to a
pre-verbal position in interrogatives
TYPES OF MOVEMENT (CONT.):
HEAD VS. PHRASE MOVEMENT
Head Movement
Head movement occurs when only the head
of a phrase moves and leaves behind its
dependents.
For example, “The apple was eaten by Sarah”,
turns into, “Sarah has eaten the apple.”
Phrase Movement
Phrase movement occurs when the head of a phase
moves in such a manner that the entire phrase
moves as well.
For example, “I saw the boy next door talk”, turns
into, “The boy next door was seen talking by me.”
TYPES OF MOVEMENT (CONT.):
WH-FRONTING
In syntactic movement, the wh-fronting discontinuity occurs when interrogative words an in
question. In English, this applies to the wh-words that are used to front questions.
For example, the words “what”, “when”, or “where”. These words form dependency between
the words that the wh- word entails and the word itself. Canonically, in languages that have wh-
fronting movememnt, the sequence for the placement of these wh- words is not at the front of
the sentence which turns a declarative sentence into an interrogative sentence.
Sentences that indicate a declarative in the obstinate answer to either of these wh- words
undergo an underlying wh- movememnt that replaces the wh- words the front of the sentences
where they are put in the wake of the rules of language.
For example, “Ahad has been reading Jane Austen.” This sentences undergoes a wh-fronting
movemement to say, “Whom has Ahad been reading?”
TYPES OF MOVEMENT (CONT.):
TOPICALIZATION
Topicalization is the type of movement wherein to make a word or a group of words the topic
of an expression, it is moved to the front of the sentence as opposed to the canonical rule of
placing it to the right.

This includes the movement of verbs, prepositions and determiners to the sentence-initial
position. For example, the sentence, “I could not swim because the water was too high”,
becomes, “Because the water was too high, I could not swim.”

Topicalization that occurs with nominal groups attached with determiners are rare, because
object arguments in the English language are a rarity in themselves,a aprt from literary works
that do not share some of the rules of grammar that we do now.
TRACES

In Chomskyan linguistics, movement leaves behind a trace. That is, it leaves behind an empty
space next to the word from where it was moved in the first place. This does not show in the
surface structure of the expression that has undergone movement, however, it does show in the
deep structure of the expression that has been rendered from its initial apperance and
utterance.

For example, “She likes eating porridge.” turns into “What do you like eating ___?” Here, the
sentence goes through wh-fronting movement and leaves a trace of “porridge” in the space that
it was before.
BARRIERS TO MOVEMENT:
LOCALITY THEORY
Locality theory strives to identify the parts of a sentence that do not allow movement to occur
in different cases. It studies the islands and the barriers that put restraints over the contituents
of a phrase, making them rigid in their spots.
It explains how subjects and adjuncts pose as barriers to movemenet because they do not move
themselves. For example, “Your picture of Fred was funny” tries to move through wh-fronting
to, “Who was your picture of ___ funny?” Here, the movemement fails to disattribute
“Fred/who” from the subject of the expression. Where “Who was your funny picture of?” is
acceptable, it does not count as movement because it does not leave behind a trace which
needs to be given a spot in the deep structure of the sentence.
Similarly, “You like Bill’s ideas”, cannot be changed into, “Whose do you like ___ ideas?”,
because it is grammatically incorrect. However, the rendition, “Whose ideas do you like?” is
acceptable and correct, but it does not follow the pattern in which movememnt it performed.
In this case, the movemement fails to disjoin the subject from the object, that is, “Bill’s ideas”
fails to be disjoined.