Somber Prospects for Late Merger (Short Article)
Dominique Sportiche
September 2017
 

I discuss the phrase-structure-theoretic operation of Late Merge proposed in Lebeaux 1991 as it is used in late adjunct merger and wholesale late merger. I show that under current theoretical assumptions about the nature of the Merge and Move operations, Late Merge overgenerates in ways that are difficult to overcome. Given that Late Merge is otherwise demonstrably computationally unparsimonious (Kobele and Michaelis 2012), I conclude that it should not be an available operation and suggest Neglect (Sportiche 2016:https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002775) as an alternative to generate the needed Logical Form representations.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003115
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: To appear in Linguistic Inquiry
keywords: merger, late (adjunct) merger, wholesale late merger, reconstruction, syntax-semantics interface, syntax
previous versions: v3 [September 2017]
v2 [September 2017]
v1 [August 2016]
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