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The Final-Over-Final Constraint (FOFC) is a proposed^[1] constraint in Generative syntax that bans head-final projections that immediately dominate head-initial projections, defined as:

Final-over-Final Constraint: If $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are members of the same extended projection, then a Head-Final $\beta P$ cannot immediately dominate a Head-Initial $\alpha P$ , as below:

This effect was first noticed by Anders Holmberg in Finnish, when comparing it with the similarly disharmonic Head-Initial over Head-Final structure^[2]^[3].

a.

Kyllä

indeed

se

he

[_AuxP

on_Aux

has

[_VP

ostanut_V

bought

auton]]

car

'He has indeed bought a car'

b.

Kyllä

indeed

se

he

[_AuxP

[_VP

auton

car

ostanut_V]

bought

on_Aux]

has

b.

Kyllä

indeed

se

he

[_AuxP

on_Aux

has

[_VP

auton]

car

on_Aux]

bought

d.

*Kyllä

indeed

se

he

[_AuxP

[_VP

ostanut_V

bought

auton]

car

on_Aux]

has

(Holmberg, 2000)

Accounting for the FOFC with the Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA)

Biberauer, Holmberg and Roberts (2014)^[4] propose an account of the FOFC derived from Kayne's Antisymmetry Theory and the Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA), in which all maximal projections follow the 'specifier head-complement template' as below, and all variation in word-order arises due to movement.

Biberaer et al. assume that all movement is triggered by the presence of a movement diacritic $\wedge$ with no semantic content such that movement to the specifier of a head $\alpha$ is triggered by the presence of $\wedge$ on $\alpha$ . Functional heads cannot introduce $\wedge$ , though they may inherit it from the head of their complement^[1]. Then from this, the proposal is that the following more formally defined constraint holds.

Final-over-Final Constraint: If a head $\alpha _{i}$ in the extended projection EP of a lexical head L, EP(L), has $\wedge$ associated with its $[\pm V]$ -feature, then so does $\alpha _{i+1}$ , where $\alpha _{i+1}$ is c-selected by $\alpha _{i}$ in EP(L).

Other accounts of the FOFC

There have been attempts, notably by Carlo Cecchetto^[5] and Hedde Zeijlstra^[6], to account for the FOFC asymmetry without making use of the LCA, instead basing their accounts as coming from restrictions in parsing on rightward-dependencies.

Cecchetto proposes that if backward dependencies cannot cross phrase structure boundaries, then the Right-roof constraint (a locality condition on rightward movement) and FOFC are 'two faces of the same coin', as they both constrain the generation of structures that involve backward localisation; a trace, in the case of the Right-roof constraint, or in regards to the selected head of a selecting head in the case of FOFC, and so the FOFC-violating configuration will only be possible if $\beta$ is a movement target for $\alpha P$ rather than $\alpha$ as backward localisation is costly for the parser and will only be possible if it is very local.

Zeijlstra's account, meanwhile follows from Abels & Neeleman's^[7] account of Greenberg's Universal 20, which observes that head movement within an extended projection cannot be rightward unless the movement is string-vacuous, which not only circumvents the theoretical and empirical challenges to LCA, but also accounts for particles which often form counter-examples to FOFC.

References

^ ^a ^b E. Clem, ‘Disharmony and the Final-Over-Final Condition in Amahuaca’, Linguistic Inquiry, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 809–822, Oct. 2022, doi: 10.1162/ling_a_00425.
^ Holmberg, Anders. 2000. Deriving OV order in Finnish. In The derivation of VO and OV, ed. by Peter Svenonius, 123–152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
^ M. Sheehan, T. Biberauer, I. G. Roberts, and A. Holmberg, The Final-over-Final Condition: A Syntactic Universal. in Linguistic inquiry monographs, no. 76. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2017.
^ T. Biberauer, A. Holmberg, and I. Roberts, ‘A Syntactic Universal and Its Consequences’, Linguistic Inquiry, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 169–225, Apr. 2014, doi: 10.1162/LING_a_00153.
^ C. Cecchetto, ‘Backward dependencies must be short’, in Challenges to Linearization, T. Biberauer and I. Roberts, Eds., DE GRUYTER, 2013, pp. 57–92. doi: 10.1515/9781614512431.57.
^ H. Zeijlstra, ‘FOFC and what left–right asymmetries may tell us about syntactic structure building’, J. Ling., vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 179–213, Feb. 2023, doi: 10.1017/S002222672200007X.
^ K. Abels and A. Neeleman, ‘Linear Asymmetries and the LCA’, Syntax, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 25–74, Mar. 2012, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9612.2011.00163.x.

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Accounting for the FOFC with the Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA)

Other accounts of the FOFC

See also

References

Further Reading