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Precede-and-command revisited revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Jan-Wouter Zwart*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
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Abstract

Basing his argumentation on an analysis of condition C effects, Bruening (2014) proposes to replace the familiar notion of c-command underlying dependency relations with a precede-and-command condition, which defines dependency relations as precedence relations within a local domain (phase). In this reply I argue that condition C effects cannot be used to show the relevance of phases for the definition of syntactic dependency, and I question the conceptual necessity of the notion phase as currently defined.

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Copyright © 2015 Linguistic Society of America

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