On certain violations of the Superiority Condition, AgrO, and economy of derivation

Abstract

This paper examines Superiority effects with VP internal constituents in English, Spanish and Bulgarian. It is argued in the paper that certain data concerning Superiority effects provide evidence for the existence of AgrO. In particular, they provide evidence that Accusative wh-phrases undergoing syntactic wh-movement must move to SpecAgrOP on their way to SpecCP. The data examined in the paper are also shown to provide support for the Economy account of the Superiority Condition.