Hedde Zeijlstra (Georg-August-University of Göttingen)

Left-right asymmetries in grammar – The final-over-final condition and other phenomena.

In this talk, I demonstrate that a well-known left-right asymmetry, Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts’ (2014) Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), can be straightforwardly explained under a symmetric approach to syntactic structure building in tandem with a mechanism that underlies the constraints on rightward movement. Apart from circumventing the theoretical and empirical problems that BHR’s analysis faces, the fact that particles form a natural class of counter examples to FOFC naturally follows under such a symmetric approach. The final part of this talk shows that this explanation to FOFC also straightforwardly applies to the semi-universal leftwardness of (subject) specifiers in both head-final and head-initial languages.