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This chapter identifies the central theoretical-empirical claim of MP, the Merge Hypothesis (MH). It rehearses the motivations for a simple combination operation that takes two objects, combines them in the simplest way possible, and treats the combination so constructed as capable of further combination. I review and explicate the claim that the simplest combination operation would do no more than combine its inputs. This means that the combination operation should not impose a serial order on what it combines, nor should it change the properties of what it combines in any way (as either would involve more than “mere” combination). So construing “simplicity” implies the No Tampering Condition (a principle that forbids changing the structures of the elements combined) and supports the idea that expressions so formed have set-like structure. I further provide a more technical specification of the combination operation by specifying its inductive definition. I then show how to derive a bunch of recognized properties of natural language Gs from this Merge conception of combination and review eight of these, again largely following and elaborating Chomsky’s earlier suggestions.
The dichotomy between lexical categories and functional categories raises a number of questions from the perspective of syntactic projection of lexical information. The author presents the answers by stating that much generative research on syntactic projection takes the view that projection is symmetric (i.e. parallel) across syntactic categories. The chapter discusses the projection of phrasal structure, and deals with some X-bar theoretic issues. The chapter reviews a number of phrase structural properties, including (multi-) dominance, precedence, binary branching, and multiplanar phrase structure. The chapter deals the projection of thematic information within the lexical projection, the regulating roles of the Theta Criterion and the Extended Projection Principle, and, finally, the so-called VP internal Subject. The chapter deals with the nature of functional categories and the concept of extended projection. The chapter discusses the extended nominal projection, the extended adjectival projection, and the extended adpositional projection.
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