The purpose of this thesis is to show that a Q-theory of wh-movement explains the phenomenon of preposition stranding in English. I assume that Wh-fronting occurs because of an agreement between C and a phonologically null Q-Particle. Expanding on this theory, I show that instances of stranded prepositions in wh-movement sentences in English can be explained with Q-theory. This stranding is possible because English prepositions are neither fully lexical nor fully functional items, but instead are semilexical, some being more functional and some being more lexical. Because prepositions contain lexical features, a Q-Particle can be merged in a position intervening between a preposition and the wh-word. The resulting movement strands the preposition in a sentence final position. I further argue that more functional prepositions that are stranded in a sentence final position have their lexical content reduced. The result of this reduction is that stranded prepositions can be optional [+OP] if they began the derivation as more functional prepositions, or obligatory [-OP] if they began the derivation as more lexical prepositions. The results of this analysis show that Q-Theory is an effective mechanism for explaining preposition stranding in the English language. Moreover, evidence presented here shows that prepositions are not only semilexical when selected from the lexicon, but their lexical/semantic strength can be directly affected by their environment and syntactic operations that affect them.
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