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Kayne 2003 mentions that there exists remnant movement in English. As background, note:

I predicted that John would marry Susan, and marry Susan/her/*Ann he will.

The argument(s) in the preposed VP must not be ‘new information.’ That is why in this sentence, Ann is starred. But it is not the case with Susan or her because Susan and the pronoun denote old information.

Kayne finds the following sentence acceptable:

I predicted that John would marry Susan, and marry he will the woman he loves.

Thus, it is an instance of remnant VP-movement. The ‘heavy’ NP/DP the woman he loves has been moved out of the VP before the VP is fronted.

The derivation of the sentence will look like

enter image description here

Any type of comment is welcome! In my view, the notion of "remnant movement" is very confusing to me. Is there any better solution or explanation? Or another simplified hypothesis? Thanks very much beforehand!

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  • 3
    I find Kayne's sentence rather marginal. I had to read it twice to get the processing correct. I am therefore skeptical about the validity of his analysis.
    – Tim Osborne
    Apr 18 at 13:25
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    and marry Susan he will OR and marry her he will. Yes, Ann is new information. Susan and her are anaphoric.
    – Lambie
    Apr 18 at 15:11
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    And this: I predicted that John would marry Susan, and marry he will the woman he loves. is OK.
    – Lambie
    Apr 18 at 15:14
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    ... and marry he will the woman I predicted. But that opens up a lot of opportunities: and marry he will the woman that I predicted Jane would tell Alena was perfect for him, except for her feet. How much of this information is "new" and how much can it contribute to grammaticality (not to mention reference)?
    – jlawler
    Apr 18 at 15:54
  • 1
    thanks for all the comments! I guess Kayne's analysis is not very clear to us.
    – Yili Xia
    Apr 21 at 13:11

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