Scrambling in Bengali: An A-/A’-Movement Distinction

Abstract

Bengali is an SOV language (Bhatt & Dayal 2007), known for its flexible word order. Elements in a phrase can be moved to other positions, both within and across clausal boundaries, in a process called scrambling (David 2015). This study aims to provide a comprehensive description of scrambling in Bengali and argues that scrambling manifests in two types of movement in this language: A- and A’-. It further argues that the type of scrambling involved (Avs. A’-) is predictable from the syntactic environment based on the following generalization: A’-movement is possible only when a Spec,CP position is available as a landing site. Given this, scrambling in Bengali supports the position-based approach to the A-/A’- distinction, recently argued for in Keine (2018). Building on previous literature on scrambling in other SOV languages, such as Hindi (Keine 2018; Dayal 1994; Mahajan 1990, 1994) and Japanese (Sato & Goto 2014; Saito 1985, 1992), this paper investigates scrambling in four syntactic environments, each with a different scrambling profile: 1) vP-internal movement; 2) clause-internal movement; 3) cross-non-finite clause movement; and 4) cross-finite clause movement. Two well-established tests are used to discern A-movement from A’-movement: i) A-movement can obviate weak crossover effects and lead to reciprocal binding; ii) A’-movement can reconstruct for Condition A. It is demonstrated that vP-internal scrambling is unambiguously A-movement, while clause-internal scrambling may be both A- and A’-movement. Additionally, cross-clausal movement out of non-finite clauses can be both A- and A’-movement, but cross-clausal movement out of finite-clauses is unambiguously A’-movement.