Intervention Effects in the Corrective But Construction

Abstract

The corrective but construction in English can be classified into two types (McCawley 1991): the anchored form (e.g., John doesn’t eat chard but spinach) and the basic form (e.g., John eats not chard but spinach). This paper discusses a certain asymmetric behavior of the two types with respect to intervention effects (Beck 1996, 2006, Pesetsky 2000): While the anchored form does not exhibit an intervention effect, the basic form does (with negation functioning as an intervener). We argue that the intervention effect in the anchored form can be evaded, because the DP containing the in-situ wh-phrase can undergo covert partial wh-movement across negation inside the coordination island (cf. Kotek 2014). In contrast, the same evasion strategy is not available in the basic form because only the largest DP containing both negation and the in-situ wh-phrase can be targeted by covert pied-piping, triggered by covert wh-movement (cf. Kotek and Erlewine 2016)