This paper addresses the following questions: is (external) merge, the binary operation that combines two elements into a constituent in every variant of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1993, 1995 and related works), an unconstrained operation? If so, what avoid generating ill-formed structures? I will argue here for a simple functional / lexical constraint on Merge, assuming a possible principled binary opposition for the items which enter the syntactic derivation. I will basically follow Kayne (2009), who assumes that the class of nouns (or L-roots) is the only open (lexical) class in grammar, updating the intuitions of Hale and Keyser (1993). This proposal leads to interesting structural and typological consequences.
Constraint on merge: The roots of the lexical/functional divide / Franco, L. - In: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES. - ISSN 1799-2591. - STAMPA. - 2:(2012), pp. 1-5. [10.4304/tpls.2.1.1-5]
Constraint on merge: The roots of the lexical/functional divide
FRANCO, LUDOVICO
2012
Abstract
This paper addresses the following questions: is (external) merge, the binary operation that combines two elements into a constituent in every variant of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1993, 1995 and related works), an unconstrained operation? If so, what avoid generating ill-formed structures? I will argue here for a simple functional / lexical constraint on Merge, assuming a possible principled binary opposition for the items which enter the syntactic derivation. I will basically follow Kayne (2009), who assumes that the class of nouns (or L-roots) is the only open (lexical) class in grammar, updating the intuitions of Hale and Keyser (1993). This proposal leads to interesting structural and typological consequences.I documenti in FLORE sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.