Weak crossover

Definition
Weak crossover is a one kind of crossover:

(i)  *whoidid hisimother see ti

Who is moved across his in (i). The fact that who is moved across his is referred to as 'weak crossover', because the ungrammaticality is not due to a Condition C violation as in the case of strong crossover. Binding theory has nothing to say on the possibility of coreference between who and his. Who is moved to an A'-position, therefore, his cannot be A-bound by who. Moreover, since his does not c-command the wh-trace, his cannot bind it (which would be a condition C violation). Still, coreference between who and his is ungrammatical. A wide range of analyses have been proposed, including Chomsky's (1976) Leftness Condition, Higginbotham's (1980) Accessibility Condition, Safir's (1984) PCOB, Reinhart's (1983) S-Structure c-command requirement. Best-known among these is Koopman &amp; Sportiche's (1982) Bijection Principle. Weak crossover also occurs at LF, in cases such as (ii) containing the quantified expression everyone.

(ii) *Hisimother loves everyonei (iii) *everyoneihisimother loves ti

In the LF (iii), derived by Quantifier Raising, the interpretation of his as a bound variable is also ruled out by the Bijection Principle.

Links

 * Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics