Vacuous Movement Hypothesis

Definition

Vacuous Movement Hypothesis is the hypothesis that movement is blocked unless it affects the (linear) order of the string it applies to.

Example

This hypothesis entails that the wh-subject in who killed her? is not moved to the specifier position of the CP (as is the standard assumption for wh-questions), but remains in situ.

Links

• Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

• Chomsky, N. 1986b. Barriers, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
• George, L. 1980. Analogical Generalization in Natural Language, diss. MIT (1981).

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