Chapter 6 - Inflectional Phrasesdiscuss in the next chapter. In the formation of certain questions an auxiliary verb is
moved to the other side of the subject:
(22) a Denise will dance will Denise dance?
b Tim is tall is Tim tall?
As we can see, both modal and aspectual auxiliaries can undergo this movement
process. The observation of interest to us is what happens when there are more than
one auxiliary:
(23) a Graham could be gardening
b could Graham be gardening?
c *be Graham could gardening?
Apparently, when there are more than one auxiliary, the first one is chosen to move.
The reason for this seems to be that moving the first auxiliary involves a shorter
movement than moving the second:
(24) a could 1 Graham t 1 be gardening?
b be 1 Graham could t 1 gardening?
Travis (1984) proposed that this phenomenon can be explained by a restriction on
head movement which prevents one head from moving over the top of another:
(25) the Head Movement Constraint (HMC)
a head must move to the next head position
The reason why (23c) is ungrammatical, then, is that if the aspectual auxiliary moves
in front of the subject, it has to move over the modal. Whereas if the modal moves, it
crosses over no other head. Now consider the case of verb movement in the presence
of not:
(26) a he –ed ring the bell = he rang the bell
b he –ed not ring the bell = *he rang not the bell
The movement represented in (26a) appears to be grammatical whereas that in (26b) is
ungrammatical. Again the difference between the two is that the grammatical
movement is shorter. But if we want to use the HMC to account for the phenomena, it
must be the case that the negative is a head as it is moving over this element that
causes the problem. But, what kind of a head is the negative? It is situated between the
inflectional element and the v/VP: