Off Phases: It’s All Relative(ized)

This paper argues that Phase Theory (Chomsky, 2000, 2001) can be subsumed by a theory of locality based on Relativized Minimality (Rizzi, 1990). Any phrase head can induce phase-like locality effects for a particular dependency, if it bears the relevant feature. C has no special status; while it reliably induces locality effects in A-bar dependencies, we find crosslinguistic variation in whether it induces locality for other dependencies. Phrases like TP induce locality effects for A-dependencies when they bear phi-features. Examining crosslinguistic patterns in long-distance A-dependencies, we tease apart the predictions of phase-based and minimality-based locality and show that minimality fares better.