A parsimonious method for generating syntactic structure

D.P. Medeiros, University of Arizona November 2020 Abstract This paper proposes a reformulation of (External) Merge, replacing the now-standard set-based version of the structure-building operation. In the present account, n-ary branching ordered trees are freely generated, followed by hierarchization and then linearization, which proceed by post-order traversal and pre-order traversal, respectively. This generative system accounts for constraints on word order: in several domains, all and only cross-linguistically attested neutral orders are base-generated, with a systematic gap in generative capacity corresponding to the typological gap of impossible neutral orders. The framework unifies Universal 20 (Greenberg 1963, Cinque 2005) effects and the Final Over Final Condition (Holmberg 2000, Sheehan et al 2017) as consequences of this generative gap. Because neutral word order variation is base generated, the cut for the duality of semantics is repositioned, properly discriminating the full range of neutral orders from genuine discourse/scope-related displacement. Beyond delimiting possible orders, the account assigns them appropriate bracketed structures. Finally, the system provides a straightforward account of attested structures containing cross-serial dependencies, including bounded relations as in English Affix-Hopping (Chomsky 1957), and unbounded relations as in Dutch (Bresnan et al 1982) and Swiss German (Shieber 1985) cross-serial subject-verb dependencies.

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