Suggested Answers for Check Questions

The I head takes a vP or VP complement. When there is negation present in a structure but no other verb apart from the lexical verb, it seems that the presence of the negative particle not blocks movement of the verb to pick up the bound morpheme, hence a dummy auxiliary is inserted. That the presence of the negative particle seems to block movement is supported by the fact that when there are more than one auxiliaries in a structure it is always the modal (or the leftmost) that moves to form a question. This observation is formulated as the Head Movement Constraint: a head cannot skip an intervening head position when it moves. In negation the negative element intervenes between the bound morpheme to be picked up and the verb, hence do is inserted. In languages other than English where a verb is not restricted to hosting only one bound morpheme, we find paradigms where a bound inflectional morpheme does actually occur attached to the head. For this reason it is also proposed that the negative is in fact a variety on light verb constructions and is best be analysed as one.