Movement

T to C movement:
Auxiliaries can also precede subjects in yes-no questions such as Do you feel like a Coke? In this
respect, inverted auxiliaries seem to resemble complementisers.

(1)Speaker a: If you will marry me

Speaker a: Will you marry me?

What position is occupied by the inverted auxiliary will? Since will appears to occupy the same pre-
subject position that the complementiser if occupies, a plausible suggestion to make is that the
inverted auxiliary actually occupies the head C position of CP. If this is so, we’d expect will and if to
be mutually exclusive; in other words, if both complementisers and inverted auxiliaries occupy the
head C position of CP, we’d expect to find that a question can be introduced either by a
complementiser or by a preposed auxiliary – but not by the two together.

But how can a finite auxiliary (which normally occupies the head T position of TP) come to be
positioned in the head C position of CP? The conventional answer is that auxiliaries in questions
move out of their normal post-subject position into pre-subject position by a movement operation
which can be referred to as auxiliary inversion. Given our assumption that an inverted auxiliary
occupies the head C position of CP, this means that the auxiliary moves from the head T position in
TP into the head C position in CP. Hence, auxiliary inversion in questions involves T-to-C movement.

Why auxiliaries should move from T to C in main-clause questions. Using a traditional metaphor, let
us say that C is a strong head in interrogative main clauses in English and that a strong C position has
to be filled by an overt word of some kind – either a complementiser directly merged in C, or an
auxiliary which moves from T to C. Complementisers like if can’t be used to introduce main clauses in
English, so the strong head C position is instead filled by moving an auxiliary from T to C (i.e. via
auxiliary inversion).

In order to understand the mechanics of auxiliary inversion, let’s look in rather more detail at the
derivation of (1) Will you marry me? The verb marry merges with the pronoun me to form the VP
marry me. This VP is then merged with the T-auxiliary will to form the T-bar will marry me, and this T-
bar is in turn merged with the pronoun you to form the TP you will marry me. The resulting TP is then
merged with a strong null interrogative complementiser ø to form the CP ø you will marry me. Being
strong, the null complementiser attracts the auxiliary will to move from T to C to attach to the null
complementiser, so filling the C position.

 But what property makes the null complementiser strong enough to attract the auxiliary
will to move from T to C? One possibility is that the null complementiser in an interrogative
main clause is affixal in nature, and so must be attached to an overt host of an appropriate
kind. Since affixes generally only attach to a particular kind of host (e.g. the past tense -d affix
attaches to verbs but not to nouns, prepositions or adjectives), and since only tensed (i.e.
present or past tense) auxiliaries move to C, one implementation of this idea is to suppose
that the affix carries a tense feature – below denoted as [tns] – which requires it to attach to
a tensed host (i.e. to a present or past tense T constituent).
The auxiliary will moves from T to C in order to satisfy the requirement of the [tns] feature on the
affix for the affixal null interrogative complementiser to have a present or past tense T
constituent affixed to it. This results in the formation of a complex C constituent containing the
original null complementiser with the preposed T-auxiliary attached to it. The null
complementiser thus behaves like an affixal question particle.

Movement as copying and deletion: