Head Movement in Linguistic Theory

Abstract

In this article, I address the issue of head movement in current linguistic theory. I propose a new view of the nature of heads and head movement that reveals that head movement is totally compliant with the standardly suggested properties of grammar. To do so, I suggest that head movement is not a single syntactic operation, but a combination of two operations: a syntactic one (movement) and a morphological one (m-merger). I then provide independent motivation for m-merger, arguing that it can be attested in environments where no head movement took place