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While generative linguists found a universal constraint on nonlocal dependencies in c‐command (see 4.3.1), other constraints that were unearthed – and which are enduring discoveries in their own right – were observed to apply to some nonlocal dependencies but not others. It was quickly demonstrated that, for any nonlocal dependency D, the syntactic type of the elements involved in the dependency, whether the dependency includes a gap or not (recall (1) versus (3)), and the syntactic position occupied by the top member of the dependency can each determine what constraints are emplaced on successfully establishing D in the first place.

For instance, dependencies between syntactic heads of phrases (e.g. (10)) are more constrained than dependencies between syntactic phrases themselves, as the former can only be established across a very short structural distance (two structurally consecutive syntactic heads; Travis 1984), whereas certain dependencies between syntactic phrases can be unbounded. With regards to dependencies between phrases, those involving gaps as tail members typically cannot be established if the gap is contained in one of a handful of distinguished phrases known as islands (Ross 1967), whereas those without gaps are typically untroubled by islands (compare (11) and (12), with an “adjunct island” headed by because). Therefore, the status of a dependency's tail also determines across what distance the dependency can be established.

1 (10) Will Polly Δ be attending the party?

2 (11) Every auntie thought that baby Bobby smiled [ISLAND because she had just arrived].

3 (12) * I know who baby Bobby smiled [ISLAND because Δ had just arrived].

When there are no syntactic islands present in a sentence, it appears at first glance that the distance across which a dependency with a phrasal tail gap can be established is unrestricted. In the sentences in (13), for instance, the apparent tops and tails of each dependency occupy different clauses, and the dependencies themselves extend across multiple clausal boundaries (which are denoted by C1, C2, and C3).

1 (13)Xavier seems [C1 to appear [C2 to want [C3 to be hired Δ by Sue]]].Who does Bo think [C1 Zoë hopes [C2 Jo believes [C3 that Sue hired Δ]]]?

Another enduring result of generative syntax research has been to show that, in these cases, appearances are deceptive. In reality, nonlocal dependencies of this type cannot extend across more than one finite clausal boundary.⁷ Thus, the sentences in (13) actually contain multiple dependencies, none of which extend across more than one clausal boundary, as illustrated in (14). The presence of each dependency in (14a,b) – a number of which consist entirely of gaps and therefore appear as “hidden” dependencies – can be confirmed through following the generative methodology outlined in Section 4.3.1: i.e. by applying syntactic tests known to diagnose the presence of such hidden dependencies and by showing that visible versions of these dependencies are attested in other languages (Frisian: Hiemstra 1986, German and Romani: McDaniel 1989; Chamorro: Chung 1994; Irish: McCloskey 2001; among many others). In certain dialects of German, for instance, the intermediate gaps in (14b) are replaced by question words, as (15) shows.

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2 (15)WenglaubstduwenPetermeintwenSusiheiratet?(Felser 2004 (10))whobelieveyouwhoPeterthinkswhoSusimarries‘Who do you believe Peter thinks that Susi is marrying?’

We previously mentioned that the structural position occupied by the top member of a dependency may determine the syntactic properties of that dependency. This is especially noticeable for dependencies between phrases with gaps as their tail members. In such cases, a correlation exists between the structural position occupied by the top member of the dependency – whether it occupies an argument position (an A‐dependency), such as the syntactic positions reserved for subjects and objects, or a non‐argument position (an A′‐dependency) – and how the dependency interacts with other grammatical phenomena. If a nominal expression that refers to the same person or thing as the top member of a dependency D intervenes between the top and tail members of D, D is licit if it is an A‐dependency but illicit if it is an A^′‐dependency (this is a crossover effect; Postal 1971) (compare (16a) and (16b)). A‐ and A^′‐dependencies differ in other ways, too. A^′‐ but not A‐dependencies can license the presence of parasitic gaps (compare (17a) and (17b), where “Δ_P” represents a parasitic gap) (Ross 1967, Engdahl 1983), and the top member of an A‐dependency can also be the tail member of an A^′‐dependency, but not vice versa (compare (18a) and (18b)) (Chomsky 1973). Their behavior also differs with respect to reconstruction (May 1977, Chomsky 1977, van Riemsdijk and Williams 1981; see Barss 2001 for an overview), a pervasive linguistic phenomenon to which we return in Section 4.3.4.

1 (16)a.Fiona seems to her mother Δ to be a genius.[A](acceptable when Fiona and her are interpreted as referring to the same person)b.*Who does her mother love Δ?[A′](unacceptable when who and her are interpreted as referring to the same person)

2 (17)a.This secret file should be burned Δ after reading {it / *ΔP}.[A]b.Which secret file did the FBI agent burn Δ after reading {it / ΔP}?[A′]

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Having uncovered this rich empirical landscape of nonlocal dependencies with tail gaps, an obvious question that arose was this: For each type of dependency with a tail gap, is there a mirror version, whereby the top is a gap and the tail is an overt item? And if so, do these mirror versions display the same properties as the originals? Thanks to another handful of enduring discoveries, generative linguists have demonstrated that both questions must be answered with “yes.” Although originally couched in the language of transformations, a “top‐gap” dependency between heads was first postulated by Chomsky (1957) for English verbal inflection (19), and the universal presence of such dependencies in natural language has been confirmed by much succeeding research (see Adger, Harbour, and Watkins 2009; Harley 2013; and Harizanov and Gribanova 2018 for discussion).

1 (19) Polly Δ often eat‐s raw carrots for breakfast.

In many languages, question phrases such as who, why, and which student do not occupy the sentence‐initial position in a standard question – as in English – but instead occupy their typical position in non‐question counterparts (e.g. the subject, object, or adverbial position). Such languages are known as wh‐in‐situ languages. Generative linguists discovered that question phrases in wh‐in‐situ languages instantiate top‐gap A^′‐dependencies (see the Turkish example in (20)), in which the gap occupies a position high above the sentence, therefore allowing the question phrase, via its connection with the gap, to take logical scope over the entire sentence. The establishment of these top‐gap dependencies is constrained in precisely the same manner as their tail‐gap counterparts (see examples (11) and (12) and accompanying text).⁸ To see this clearly, compare the simplified phrase markers in (21). Putting irrelevant differences between these languages aside, one observes that their question‐formation strategies are the same, differing only in which member of the A^′‐dependency is pronounced (i.e. top‐gap in English vs. tail‐gap in Turkish).

1 (20)ΔAyşekim‐iöp‐tü?Ayşewho‐ACCkiss‐PST‘Who did Ayşe kiss?’

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In addition, generative linguists have also discovered that some languages, such as Adyghe (a Northwest Caucasian language; see Potsdam and Polinsky 2012), utilize top‐gap A‐dependencies. In (22), the subject of root clause is an unpronounced gap, yet this gap co‐refers with the demonstrative pronoun a‐xe‐me “these/they” in the embedded infinitival clause.

1 (22)Δ[ a‐xe‐mepj&ip.schwa;sme‐ra‐tx&ip.schwa;‐new ]ø‐fjež'a‐&ip.rscpi;e‐xDEM‐PL‐ERGletter‐ABS3PL.ERG‐write‐INF3ABS‐begin‐PST‐3PL.ABS‘They began to write a letter.’

When neither the top nor the tail of a dependency D is a gap (and therefore both the top and the tail are overt items), in cases where the dependencies concern nominal expressions, the status of the tail often determines which constraints are emplaced on establishing D.⁹ For instance, the locality conditions on establishing the dependency vary according to whether the tail member is a personal or possessive pronoun (e.g. she, her) or a reflexive or reciprocal pronoun (e.g. herself, each other). Roughly speaking, a personal or possessive pronoun P can establish a syntactic dependency with a c‐commanding nominal expression N only if N does not occupy P's binding domain (23),¹⁰ whereas a reflexive or reciprocal pronoun R can establish a syntactic dependency with N only if N occupies R's binding domain (24).

1 (23)a.William thinks that [BD Edith dislikes him].b.*Edith thinks that [BDWilliam dislikes him].(BD = binding domain for him)

2 (24)a.*William thinks that [BD Edith dislikes himself].b.Edith thinks that [BDWilliam dislikes himself].

Interestingly, common and proper noun phrases, such as the red apple and London, can never be tails of non‐gap dependencies, as (25) shows. In this example, the sentence is judged as unacceptable if she and Virginia refer to the same person. The sentence is only acceptable if she and Virginia refer to different people, in which case no dependency is established between the two phrases.

1 (25) She regrets that Virginia hurt Joseph's feelings.

When a nominal tail engages in such dependencies, it is referred to as bound. The three facts about nominal binding exemplified in (23) to (25) have endured because they are incredibly useful for diagnosing syntactic structure. For instance, if one wants to know the size of particular syntactic phrase P (i.e. whether it is as large as a binding domain), one can test to see how bound pronouns behave within P. Alternatively, if one wants to know if a particular hierarchical position A in a sentence c‐commands another position B, one can see if a nonlocal dependency between two co‐referring proper nouns can be established using these positions. If it cannot, then A c‐commands B.

It should be clear at this juncture that one can organize the discoveries discussed so far in this subsection such that they form an emerging typology of nonlocal syntactic dependencies. This typology is presented in diagrammatic form in (26).

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We must emphasize here that, although the table in (26) consolidates the preceding text in a clear and instructive way, it does not attempt to provide an exhaustive typology of the nonlocal dependencies uncovered by generative linguists over the last 60 years. The main reason for this is that the position of certain types of nonlocal dependencies within this table is still debated. For instance, it remains undecided whether the phenomenon of extraposition, which involves phrases appearing rightward of their canonical position (compare (27a) and (27b–c)) and which was first documented by Rosenbaum (1967), involves a gap (27b) (as Ross 1967 and Baltin 1981 contend) or not (27c) (as Culicover and Rochemont 1990 and Haider 2010 argue).

1 (27)a.Someone that I don't know has left a message on your answer machine.b.Someone Δ has left a message on your answer machine that I don't know.c.Someone has left a message on your answer machine that I don't know.

This typology (or one similar to it) has endured because it represents the agreed‐upon generalizations that form the bedrock for much recent generative linguistic research. This research has typically aimed to either (i) subsume a newly discovered or neglected nonlocal dependency under an established class or (ii) show that certain classes in the established typology are only superficially different, and that, at the correct level of analysis, they are indistinct.

In research that aims to fulfill (i), the discoveries that constitute (26) are used as diagnostic tools. Consider the phenomenon of scrambling (Ross 1967), which refers to the process that derives noncanonical word orders, typically within the same clause (compare (28a) and (28b), from Japanese).

1 (28)a.Mary‐gasonohon‐oyonda(canonical word order)Mary‐NOMthatbook‐ACCread‘Mary read that book.’b.sonohon‐oMary‐gayonda(scrambled word order)thatbook‐ACCMary‐NOMread‘Mary read that book.’

Recall that A‐ and A^′‐dependencies behave differently with respect to crossover and parasitic gaps (recall the discussion surrounding the examples in (16) to (18)). By using these facts and others as diagnostic tools – i.e. by observing how scrambling behaves with respect to these phenomena – linguists were able to determine whether scrambling is an A‐ or A^′‐dependency. It transpires that there are actually two forms of scrambling (A‐scrambling and A^′‐scrambling) (Fanselow 1990; Mahajan 1990; Webelhuth 1992; see Karimi 2008 for an overview), an important discovery demonstrating that the same surface syntactic pattern – namely, noncanonical word‐order – can arise from distinct grammatical processes.

In attempting to reduce the typology in (26) to a more fundamental picture, research that aims to fulfil (ii) frequently tackles the question of why natural language contains the seemingly different classes of nonlocal dependencies that it does. Chomsky's linguistic research from the mid‐1970s onward has reductionist tendencies in this vein, and has been explicitly reductionist since 1995's Minimalist Program. A common target for this type of linguistic research is locality constraints. For instance, Chomsky (1977) famously proposed that the locality constraints on establishing an A^′‐dependency – namely, that an A^′‐dependency cannot extend across a syntactic island or two clausal boundaries – are reflections of one underlying locality constraint called Subjacency. According to conceptual framework behind Subjacency, certain phrases (the Tense Phrase and the Noun Phrase in English) are, by their nature, partial disruptors of A^′‐dependencies that extend across them. This idea has been retained in Subjacency's successor, the Phase Theory (Chomsky 2000, 2001a, 2001b), in which certain phrases (the Complementizer Phrase and the vP (as in (9)) are again considered to be inherent disruptors of nonlocal dependencies. In removing the notion of syntactic islands from syntactic theory, Subjacency and its successor Phase Theory in effect unite the locality conditions on A and A^′‐dependencies, with the ban on Improper Movement (see (18b)) yielding the apparent finite‐clause‐boundedness of A‐dependencies.