Mirror Principle Violations in Greek Prefixed Verbal Complexes
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Abstract
This study investigates the formation of prefixed verbal complexes in Greek. I provide evidence that, in their base position, prepositional prefixes (henceforth, prefixes) are generated in [Spec, VP], below Tense. However, after spell-out, they surface in a position preceding Tense, showing a case of Mirror Principle violations. I argue that the traditional Head Movement (Koopman 1984, Travis 1984, Baker 1985) is inadequate to model the linear order of morphemes in prefixed verbal complexes. Instead, they require the use of two main mechanisms: the syntactic operation of Generalized Head Movement (Arregi and Pietraszko 2018, 2019), which unifies upward and downward head movement by creating a single complex head, and the postsyntactic operation of Merger (Matushansky 2006, Harizanov 2014, Martinovic 2019), which combines a head with its specifier.