Syntactic Strength employed by Chomsky (1995) to designate movement by Spell Out is discarded
in Chomsky (1998a,b) as a "difficult" property: a feature of a feature (?), a feature by itself (?) ... I
assume that the solution lies in properly understanding how/why "Strength" is related to features like
[case], [tense], [wh] and propose that, while being crucially different from  the "content" aspect of
a checking feature, [+/-strong] is its computationally active complement. The content component of
features outlines the route of a Derivation, hence D-space, whereas its Strength complement measures
the speed of a Derivation, invoking for the purpose D-time, presumably with values before/after Spell
Out. The content/velocity dichotomy of checking features is pertinent to a model where in the absence 
of levels of representation (Epstein et al. 1998, Simpson to appear, also Chomsky 1998b)the computational 
process itself comes to the fore, and the locality of checking from "earlier"minimalism is preserved. 
Assuming that for heuristic as much as for cognitive purposes a Derivation is entitled to a temporal as 
well as the traditional spacial representation, the First-position Ban on clitics in Bulgarian is conceptualized 
in terms of Strength Entailment. Consider the following patterns:

(1) *(Kakvo) mu        kaza      t (2) *(Ne) mu       govorjat        (3) *(govorjat) mu          t
 what  him-DAT said-3SG            not   him-DAT speak-3PL            speak-3PL  him-DAT
   "What did you tell him?"             "They do not speak to him"          "They speak to him"

(1-3) show that at least one lexical item (LI) realizing a syntactic constituent, which is not itself an
enclitic, must precede an enclitic/a string of enclitics (Franks 1995, Alexandrova 1996, a.o.). LI(s)
may be merged (proclitic ne in (2)) or moved/remerged (kakvo in (1), govorjat in (3)) to the left of
the (en)clitic/(en)clitic string. Assuming 1) that Merge, just like Move/Remerge, involves feature checking 
(Kitahara 1997, a.o.), 2) that linear precedence translates into structural dominance (cf. Kayne's 1994 LCA)/
follows from derivational sequencing (Epstein et al.'s 1998 derivational c-command), and 3) that an LI (including 
clitics themselves) in the head or Spec of a projection XP at Spell Out involves (at least) Strength checking, 
I formulate the following Strength Entailment:

(4)  [+strong] (CL) => [+strong] (Xn), where X/Spec-X c-commands CL and n = or >1.

Given the dispensability of PF/LF, Strength Entailment commits the account of the CL-1 Ban to the
computation, thus subsuming 1) cases of remedial movement/remerger (cf. (3)) for which Rivero (1998) proposes 
"stylistic" V-movement in PF which results in a "checking configuration", even though it need not condition actual 
feature checking (cf. Embick & Izvorski 1994 for accounts in terms of Halpern's Prosodic Inversion, Marantz's 
Morphological Merger), 2) cases of remedial merger (cf. (2)). The logic of the proposal outlined here is in principle e
xtendable to CL-2/V-2 phenomena and it is up to future research to test its explanatory adequacy.
 

REFERENCES
 

Alexandrova, G. 1996. "The Case for Cl(itic)P". Cahiers Linguistiques d'Ottawa 24:117-150.  Department of Linguisitcs, Ottawa, University of Ottawa.
Chomsky, N. 1995. "Categories and Transformations". The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.:
 MIT Press.
----------. 1998a. "Some Observations on Economy in Generative Grammar". Is the Best Good Enough?, ed. by P.Barbosa et al. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
----------. 1998b. Minimalist Inquiries: The framework. (MITWPL 15). Department of Linguistics
 and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Embick, D. and R. Izvorski. 1994. "On LHM in Bulgarian". Proceedings of ESCOL 12.
Epstein, S.D., E. Groat, R. Kawashima, and H. Kitahara. 1998. A Derivational Approach to Syntactic Relations. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
Franks, Steven. 1995. Parameters of Slavic Morphosyntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kayne, R. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Kitahara, H. 1997. Elementary Operations and Optimal Derivations. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Rivero, M. L. 1998. "Stylistic Verb Movement in Yes-No Questions in Bulgarian Bulgarian and Breton". Paper presented at CLITE 1, April 1998, Szeged, Hungary. (To appear.)
Simpson, A. To appear. "On Covert Movement and LF". The Minimalist Parameter, ed. by G. Alexandrova et al. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.
 
 

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