Chapter 3 - Basic Concepts of Syntactic TheoryThese representations indicate that the positions marked [DP e] are present in the
structure, but empty and thus the movement does not change the structure but merely
moves things about within the framework it provides.
There is reason to believe however, that the two empty positions in (92) are not the
same as they display different properties. Consider the empty subject position in (92a).
As this is a position to which something moves it would not be reasonable to think of
it as being filled by some other element before the movement takes place. If there were
something in this position at D-structure, presumably it would have to be deleted to
allow the object to move into the position as general principles of structure do not
allow two elements to occupy the same structural position. But if this element is
always deleted, how could we ever be aware of its existence, let alone its nature.
Moreover, if it were possible to delete elements in a structure to allow others to move
into the vacated positions, we would expect far more movement possibilities that we
actually observe. We would be able to move an object into a subject position of any
verb, not just the passive ones:
(93) a [DP the FBI] found [DP the hideout]
b *[DP the hideout] found [DP e]
Obviously, this is a situation we want to avoid and so we need to strengthen the
Structure Preservation principle to prevent things in a structure from being deleted
willy-nilly. Suppose we assume that lexical material that enters a structure cannot be
altered by a movement. This maintains the Structure Preservation principle given that
the lexical items that are inserted into a structure determine that structure to a great
extent through notions of projection and selection, but it also prevents the deletion of
lexical information once it has been inserted into a structure. This principle is called
the Projection Principle:
(94) the Projection Principle
structures are projected from the lexicon at all levels
What this means is that anything that is inserted into a structure from the lexicon
cannot change from one level of representation to another. If a verb is put into a
structure, nothing can delete or alter this verb, turning it into a noun, for example. Also
no movement can alter a verb’s selectional properties: a transitive verb will remain
transitive at D-structure and S-structure even if the object is moved.
Under these assumptions, it must be that a passive verb loses its subject before it
enters into a structure. There are numerous ways in which we might suppose that this
can happen, but we will put the matter aside until we are in a better position to
understand it. The general point is that as a result of being passivised, a verb fails to
assign a -role to its subject and hence this position is absolutely vacant at D-
structure. So with regard to the empty subject position in (92a) we can say that this
position, whilst being present in the structure, is simply devoid of any contentful
element and hence is vacant to be moved into.
Now consider the nature of the empty object in (92b): the extraction site of the
moved object. By the Projection Principle, this object position must remain in the
structure and cannot be deleted otherwise the transitive verb would find itself without
an object and hence would be sitting in the structural position of an intransitive verb.