Subjacency
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Subjacency is a general syntactic locality constraint on movement. It specifies restrictions placed on movement and regards it as a strictly local process. This term was first defined by Noam Chomsky in 1973 and constitutes the main concept of the Bounding Theory. The revised definition from Chomsky (1977) is as follows:
"A cyclic rule cannot move a phrase from position Y to position X (or conversely) in … X … [α… [β… Y … ] … ] … X …, where α and β are cyclic nodes. Cyclic nodes are S and NP" (Chomsky 1977: 73).
This principle states that no movement can move an element over more than one bounding node at a time. In more recent frameworks, bounding nodes which are hurdles to movement are AgrP and DP (S and NP in Chomsky’s definition respectively). Subjacency Principle limits movement in the required way by defining bounding nodes. It also accounts for the fact that all movements are local.
References
- Chomsky, Noam. 1977. Essays on form and interpretation. New York: North-Holland.
- Cook, Vivian J. and Mark Newson. 2007. Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.