Interleaving Syntax and Postsyntax: Spellout before Syntactic Movement

Abstract

This paper explores the claim that a particular domain—a phase—can be at least partially spelled out, and then subsequently accessed by heads from a higher phase. I provide morphological evidence for this claim, by looking at various examples in which a morphological (i.e. postsyntactic) process feeds a later narrow syntactic one. Main evidence for this argument comes from the interaction between syntactic head movement and postsyntactic affixation in the Niger-Congo language Wolof, which confirms an important prediction of this analysis. Namely, if a postsyntactic process can feed a syntactic one, we also expect the postsyntactic process to be bled if the structural conditions for its application are not met, resulting in surface opacity effects. This is precisely what we find in Wolof, where the past tense morpheme oon is postsyntactically affixed onto the verb in a particular structural configuration and carried along with it to C, but stranded by the verb below C if the structural requirements for its affixation are not met.