Unifying the <i>that</i>-trace and anti-<i>that</i>-trace effects

This article proposes a unified analysis of the 'that'-trace and anti-'that'-trace effects in English. Unification of these two seemingly diametrically opposed effects remains an outstanding problem. It is argued that complement and relative clauses in English exhibit systematic variation in terms of how articulated their C-domains are. This, combined with Spec-to-Spec Anti-Locality, leads to a novel analysis of the anti-'that'-trace and 'that'-trace effects. The analysis has interesting theoretical implications for phase theory and the mechanics of successive cyclicity, particularly concerning the position of the phase escape hatch, which is claimed to be the specifier of the complement of the phase head, and not the specifier of the phase head as in standard phase theory