Hi, I am wondering about the validity of crossover effects as evidence for movement.

Strong crossover as in (1) and weak crossover as in (2) are said to be due to movement of the wh-operator across a coreferential pronoun, i.e. here, movement of the relative pronoun (who and that) across he.

(1) *The man who_i he_i thinks you saw t_i
(bad in the intended meaning the man such that he thinks that you saw him, but good in a non-coreferential reading, i.e. he thinks that you saw somebody else)

(2) *The man that_i his_i mother loves t_i
(bad in the intended meaning the man such that his mother loves him, but good in a non-coreferential reading, i.e. somebody else's mother loves him (the man))

These movements cause that in the original position, now a trace occurs - which is an R-expression and, hence, has to be free everywhere according to Principle C of the Binding Theory. I.e.: t cannot be bound by the relative pronoun, therefore coreference is impossible.

So far, so good. I see the point definitely for the strong crossover, given that the pre-movement structure is possible in a coreferential reading:

(3) He_i thinks you saw him_i.

I.e., you take (3), you move him, and then the sentence is not possible any longer: evidence for movement. Fine.

However, in the case of weak crossover, I believe that also the pre-movement structure is impossible or at least impaired:

(4) ?His_i mother loves him_i.

If this is the case, how can you take the phenomenon as depicted in (2) as evidence for movement? Given that (4) is already bad, you cannot attribute the impossibility of (2) to there being movement, right? Do you see what my confusion is? I don't even want to say that in (2), there is no movement - I think there is - but I am wondering about the logic of the argument.

I hope you can help me out! Thanks!

Hi Daniel, thanks for the quick answer!

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However, in the case of weak crossover, I believe that also the pre-movement structure is impossible or at least impaired:

(4) ?His_i mother loves him_i.

What's wrong with that? It couldn't be "his mother loves himself".

Indeed not. But is the referent of his and him really the same? It's probably clearer with a proper name:

(5) His mother loves John

Is it possible that it's John's mother that loves John? Or only somebody else's mother?

On the other hand, while I do find (2) potentially confusing, I don't think it's that bad. "John is the man that only his mother loves." It works better with a modifier like that. And certainly if you add "own" as in "the man that his own mother loves". I think one hypothetical possibility for this would be to say that these are instances of relevance coincidental coreference rather than coindexation, if you really want to save the other analysis. But that reading seems possible to me.

You are right, I probably shouldn't have used an asterisk for (2). Let's say that the intended coreferential reading is not unproblematic and certainly not the default one, but not as impossible as it is in (1).
What do you think of the following?

(6) The man that his mother loves is John.

I would like to not put either "own" nor "only", as it probably changes the meaning of the relative to some kind-defining structure, i.e. "John is the type of guy that only his mother loves" - where "his" does not refer any longer to "John" but to the concept of person that the speaker is thinking about. What do you think?

The man who he thinks you saw - Is this sentence o.k on non-coreferential reading? I cant parse the sentence,could you please tell me the meaning