Intermediate Agree and wh-scope

This presentation is a preliminary study to investigate how wh-elements are licensed in some wh-in-situ languages, especially Japanese, within the minimalist program. Since Chomsky (2000), it is assumed that the syntactic computation proceeds phase by phase and locality conditions are reduced to the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC). However, according to Watanabe (to appear), wh-elements are licensed via Agree in Japanese and this wh-licensing may pose a problem on PIC, because an unmoved embedded wh-element may take matrix wh-scope in this language and Agree between this element and the matrix C should violate PIC. This presentation claims that Intermediate Agree plays a role in rescuing wh-licensing and head functions as escape hatch, bridging the embedded wh-element with the matrix C. (119 words)