Unordered Merge and its Linearization

Abstract

In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), Merge is a set operation that imposes no intrinsic ordering among its members. However, syntactic structures are linearized into strings of words at PF. This paper proposes that in order for a Merger set to be linearized, its members must be either hierarchically displaced or morphologically fused into a single terminal node. The empirical study focuses on the structure of DP and its linearization in various constructions. It is shown that the Definiteness Effect (DE) can be attributed to the failure to linearize the DP in unaccusatives. The systematic lack of the DE in some languages (Arabic, Hebrew, and Romanian), unexpected in previous analyses, is due to the morphological N‐to‐D raising (fusion), therefore satisfying the linearization condition. Furthermore, cross‐linguistic evidence is given to show that D can be attracted out of DP for feature checking, rendering transitive DP arguments well‐formed.

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