Total Reconstruction, PF Movement, and Derivational Order

Abstract

Theories of total reconstruction have generally supposed that movement can be followed by an undoing operation like LF lowering (May 1977, 1985) or deletion of higher copies (Chomsky 1993). We argue that reconstruction effects can be derived only if the original movement is purely phonological. There are no undoing operations. We present three distinct arguments, based on an interaction between raising and wh-movement in English, facts from agreement with group terms in British English, and multiple scrambling in Japanese. The arguments imply that the T-model is correct in supposing that movement that affects both LF and PF must precede movement that affects only PF.