The difference between the two mechanisms for wh-question binding (i.e., sucessive cyclic movement and pronominal binding) is characterized, inter alia, by the presence of island constraints (subjacency effects) in movement but not pronominal constructions. Using experimental data from child and adult speakers of Akan (pronominal binding) and Serbo-Croatian (movement and pronominal binding), it is argued that: 1) Previous experiments on English-speaking children’s knowledge of the block on extraction from within adjuncts do not positively support early use of a movement grammar in English; 2) Apparent sensitivity to movement constraints may arise as a consequence of processing preferences; 3) The evidence to date is nonetheless compatible with movement as the default hypothesis for wh-binding; 4) The parsing preference for non-island locations for a wh-word may have utility for the learner, helping to correct overly permissive grammars.

This article examines the absence of obviation with volition verbs in Older French (e.g., je veux que je soye batu). It is shown that the analyses which propose that obviation depends on the anaphoric character of Tense or on the presence of a lexical complementizer cannot explain the absence of obviation in Older French. The analysis proposed in this article relies on the semantic selection of verbs. It is argued that in Older French, volition verbs (i.e., non-factive emotive verbs) select a [definite event], realized on the head of MP, which licenses an operator in Comp; as a result, the binding domain of the embedded subject is closed and the subjects can be coreferent. The presence of this operator, which can be reanalyzed as the head of CP, also accounts for the fact that both moods, indicative and subjunctive, can be found in the complements of volition verbs. It is also proposed that the changes which affect the complements of volition verbs in Classical French (presence of obviation and absence of indicative mood) are triggered by the fact that volition verbs ceased to select the category [definite event].

Many, if not all, languages possess syntactic constructions in which covert arguments, often referred to as “implicit arguments”, are required. While the implicit arguments in Western languages have received considerable attention, the study of the same topic in non-Western languages such as Japanese has been neglected. In this article, the nature of the implicit arguments of the potential and resultative constructions in Japanese is investigated. A detailed examination reveals that the implicit AGENTs in these two constructions differ in terms of the specificity of their reference, which in turn suggests that the representations of the two types of implicit arguments reflect this difference. It is argued that the implicit AGENT of the potential construction should be analyzed as proarb while that of the resultative construction is realized as pro.