Moving and shifting.

This talk focuses on the interaction between nominal type shifting and movement. The empirical domain of inquiry is A’-extraction asymmetries in English, like in (1) and (2) (first observed in Postal 1994).

(1a) What is there on the table?

(1b) *A book, there is on the table.

(2a) What color did Mary paint the house?

(2b) *Magenta, Mary painted the house.

I argue that the environments exhibiting this asymmetry are ones in which the DP has a property-type denotation derived via nominal type shifting (Partee 1987). I propose that, in English, nominal type shifters are in complementary distribution with the anaphoric definite determiner necessary for Trace Conversion. Thus, positions like (1) and (2) are incompatible with movement that cannot reconstruct. This analysis makes predictions about the behavior of definite descriptions in these environments. I show preliminary evidence that these predictions bear out.