On SWIPING in English: Failure of Agree and the Subsequent Repairs

Abstract

This paper investigates the syntax of SWIPING in English, the canonical instance being the inversion of the wh-word with the preposition at the edge of an elided clause. Incorporating more examples into the domain of SWIPING, we take an Agree-based approach to this peculiar phenomenon. More specifically, we argue that SWIPING obtains when a certain phrase containing the wh-word undergoes Move despite the failure of Agree, but the illegal Move is later rescued by repair-by-ellipsis. The wh-word contained within the moved phrase now in the [Spec,CP] position subsequently undergoes SWIPING or inversion with the preposition, through which its uninterpretable wh-feature establishes a proper Agree relation with the uninterpretable [Q]-feature of the complementizer.