In this squib, we provide novel empirical support for treating the thematic domain—the vP—as a locality domain like CP (a phase), in agreement with a growing body of research (see Fox 1999, Barbiers 2002, Legate 2003, Rackowski and Richards 2005, Cozier 2006, Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian 2011, Buell 2012, Van Urk and Richards 2015; see Den Dikken 2006 for an opposing view). We show how vP phasehood solves a previously unsolved problem for defining the locality of Icelandic Stylistic Fronting. We present novel data to show that Stylistic Fronting of verbs and particles can only cross one phase boundary, a generalization that is empirically superior to clause-boundedness. Our study supports the view that v defines a phase edge whether the verb is linked to an external argument or not (Legate 2003, Marantz 2007).

BibTeX:

@Article{ingason2017clause,
author = {Ingason, Anton Karl and Jim Wood},
journal = {Linguistic Inquiry},
title = {Clause bounded movement: Stylistic fronting and phase theory},
year = {2017},
number = {28},
pages = {513--527},
volume = {3}
}