Complementizer-cliticization in Hebrew and the empty category principle

Conclusion

I have tried to show that the complementizer še adjoins to or substitutes for an X⁰ category on its right. This process of syntactic movement vacates the head of the CP node. That is why še fails to trigger complementizer-trace phenomena.

I have assumed in this paper the X-bar schemata proposed in Chomsky (1986). Specifically, I adopted the proposal that the X-bar convention carries over to the non-lexical projections of COMP and INFL. Under this view, S' is a projection of C(OMP), labelled CP and has the structure given in (20), with [SPEC/CP] being the landing-site of Whoperators and the head of CP, the node under which the complementizer is generated. Note, now that in a theory where COMP and S' are taken to be defective categories from the point of view of X-bar theory, the first because it does not project beyond its head, the second because it fails to have either a SPEC or a head, it is hard to motivate movement of a complementizer.¹³ If Wh-movement involves adjunction to COMP, as a number of theories have held, it is hard to see how movement of COMP itself, that is, the category to which Wh-elements adjoin, could be licensed. In the theory advanced in Chomsky (1986), movement of a complementizer is a sub-case of Head Movement, a perfectly licit and familiar sort of movement. The analysis proposed for the Hebrew complementizer še in this paper may thus be taken as an argument in favor of the structure in (20) above.