English Heavy NP Shift as Clause-internal Fragmenting

Abstract

This paper provides a specifying coordination based analysis of Heavy NP Shift (HNPS) in English. Proposing that the clause involving HNPS has bi-clausal vP or TP coordination, we submit that HNPS is derived by leftward movement of one surviving phrase from the second clause to be deleted. We then show that the well-known restrictions on HNPS like the Right Roof constraint or the ban on preposition-stranding HNPS follow from this conception of HNPS. Specifically, the Right Roof constraint is attributed to the economy requirement of sentence structure building in English, which employs left-branching. The ban on preposition-stranding HNPS is due to the fact that the empty category or null argument as an object of a preposition in the first coordinate clause ends up not being licensed appropriately. We also examine the hierarchical effects that HNPS exerts on the clause involving it