The Copy Theory of Movement

This volume brings together papers which address issues regarding the copy theory of movement. According to this theory, a trace is a copy of the moved element that is deleted in the phonological component but is available for interpretation at L(ogical) F(orm). Thus far, the bulk of the research on the copy theory has mainly focused on interpretation issues at LF. The consequences of the copy theory for syntactic computation per se and for the syntax–phonology mapping, in particular, have received much less attention in the literature, despite its crucial relevance for the whole architecture of the model. As a contribution to fill this gap, this volume congregates recent work that deals with empirical and conceptual consequences of the copy theory of movement for the inner working of syntactic computations within the Minimalist Program, with special emphasis on the syntax–phonology mapping.

Eduardo Raposo, University of California at Santa Barbara:
"If I look at the sky and see two identical airplanes, one following the other at a certain distance, my common sense, my cognitive make-up and my experience tell me that, putting aside the possibility of an optical illusion, I am indeed facing two distinct, albeit similar airplanes, rather than two instantiations of the same airplane occupying different chunks of space. One of the intriguing aspects of the copy theory of traces, especially as developed in this book, is that this basic informal principle of perception does not apply in the realm of language: under certain circumstances, the same linguistic object may occupy (be pronounced/perceived/interpreted) in two different sentential positions. There appears to be an analogue in the domain of general relativity theory: in the vicinity of an extremely massive body such as a black hole, the light emanating, say, from a star, may be bent in such a way that it goes through two distinct, opposite sides of the hole. Appropriately positioned, we might thus be able to see two instantiations of the same star. If the copy theory is correct, it will confirm in an intriguing way the fact that language has "properties that appear to be unusual in the biological world" (Chomsky, The Minimalist Program) but are instead rather close to those of physical systems of some complexity."