Dependencies, Phrase Structure, and Extractions

Abstract This chapter presents a reformulation of Chomsky’s (1995) Merge, under which the basic operation of grammar cannot take as its input two constituents; rather the first member of the input is always a head, drawn directly from the numeration. While c-command has been argued to be the structural primitive defined under Chomsky’s (1995) conception, I shall argue that under the present conception, the structural primitive of the theory is head government. This has potential empirical advantages in the domain of movement. In particular, I shall argue that the present theory allows for a radical simplification of Kayne’s (I 984) Connectedness. In what follows, Section I presents Chomsky’s (1995) theory, Section 2 defines the present notion of Merge, and Section 3 demonstrates its consequences for movement theory. As part of the revision of the theory in Section 2 a principle of Interpretation is suggested which subsumes Chomsky’s (1995) Last Resort.