Asymmetries in doubling and Cyclic Linearization

This paper investigates asymmetries in doubling among verbs, objects and subjects in Cantonese. It is shown that each of these elements has a distinct doubling profile in topic constructions and right dislocation: doubling is sometimes prohibited, required or optional. Couched in terms of the copy theory of movement, I suggest that the operation responsible for erasing copies in a movement chain is regulated by phonological requirements that follow from a version of cyclic linearization. Particularly, I propose that the copy-erasing operation can be suspended as a last resort in cases where its application would otherwise violate phonological requirements imposed by cyclic linearization. The differences in doubling possibility among verbs, objects and subjects follow from the availability of the edge position of a phase to these elements. The proposal derives the Cantonese doubling pattern without recourse to the phrase-structural status of the (non-)doubling elements and maintains that the mechanism that determines copy pronunciation is the same for heads and phrases. I take this as a further piece of evidence for the unification of head and phrasal movement, resonating with much recent work on this topic.