Echo Reduplication: When Too-Local Movement Requires PF-Distinctness

Abstract

This paper provides supporting evidence for a number of hypotheses made in recent models of derivational syntax. The phenomenon under study is shm-reduplication in English, a particular instance of the more general, cross-linguistic pattern of echo reduplication. It is argued that the two elements in a reduplicated structure form a chain of two left-peripheral positions that, due to a distinctness requirement within a Spell-Out unit for the Transfer to PF, cannot be mapped onto linear order. A number of seemingly unrelated facts are derived rather naturally: (i) English shmreduplication cannot appear in an argument position; (ii) the two copies involved in shmreduplication are strictly adjacent; (iii) the phonological phrasing of the two copies is not the intonation of a compound; (iv) the discourse context felicitating shm-reduplication is not out-ofthe-blue; (v) no echo reduplication process yields the reverse order (e.g., with the echo reduplicant preceding the base); and (vi) echo reduplication is never the exponent of a Case- or wh-feature.