Discourse‐Feature‐Driven Movement in Spanish and the Revised PGU*

Abstract

AbstractThis paper aims to reconsider the purpose of movement and its Last‐Resort nature. In conformity with Chomsky (2008) and Jiménez‐Fernández (2020), the apparent optional movement in Spanish is not free at base, but related to the discourse‐feature inheritance. However, I depart from the latter by arguing that these discourse features do notwork in tandemwith the EF in T in order to attract the relevant constituent to [Spec,TP]; rather, movement may be required by the need to preserve the functional relations established through Agree, i.e., probe‐goal union (PGU) formulated in Miyagawa (2010). Furthermore, in light of Last Resort, I propose that PGU should be revised in a way that the goal moves into the probe if andonlyif no other more economical alternative is available to manifest the established functional relations. We shall see that Contrastive Focus and DOM constructions in Spanish empirically evidence the Revised PGU approach, and some self‐evident predictions based on it also prove the advantage of the current proposal.