Abstract Minimalist grammars have been criticized for their inability to analyze successive cyclic movement and multiple wh-movement in a manner that is faithful to the Minimalist literature. Persistent features have been proposed in the literature as a potential remedy (Stabler, 2011; Laszakovits, 2018). We show that not all persistent features are alike. The persistent features involved in multiple wh-movement do not increase subregular complexity, making this phenomenon appear very natural from the perspective of MGs. The persistent features in successive-cyclic movement, on the other hand, change the subregular nature of movement, favoring an alternative treatment along the lines of Kobele (2006).
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:::bibtex
@inproceedings{graf2021multiple,
title={Multiple wh-movement is not special: The subregular complexity of persistent features in {M}inimalist grammars},
author={Graf, Thomas and Kostyszyn, Kalina},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2021},
pages={275--285},
year={2021}
}