Scrambling and Reconstruction Asymmetries

This paper investigates a series of properties exhibited by different types of scrambling in Mongolian and their implications on the distinction between A- and Ā-movement. In Mongolian, short and intermediate scrambling behave like A-movement, whereas long-distance scrambling shows mixed A/Ā-properties. A close examination of scrambling in this language reveals that Condition C reconstruction effects, which appear to distinguish some instances of Ā-movement from A-movement, in fact do not track the A/Ā-distinction. I relate the phenomenon in Mongolian to a language-specific case assignment mechanism, under a late merger approach (Takahashi & Hulsey 2009).