Got Insertion and Head Movement in English

초록

This article deals with insertion of the semantically dummy verb got after certain occurrences of have and head movement of have in such situations in English. It argues that head movement in English is a postsyntactic morphological movement (rather than a narrow-syntactic operation). Got insertion in the have got construction is determined by prosodic weight of the phonological material between the subject DP and the VP. This inserted got subsequently induces movement of have, now as an auxiliary verb. This auxiliary verb moves to T° and then, in the case of questions, to C° via head movement. Thus, this paper identifies head movement in English as a PF phenomenon. This result is consistent with properties of postsyntactic head movement proposed in a recent dichotomy by Harizanov and Gribanova (2019). An interesting consequence of the current analysis is that at the point of application of got insertion and head movement, both morphosyntactic structure and prosodic structure coexist in the component of PF.

키워드