Pair-Merge under MERGE
Hisatsugu Kitahara (Keio University)
Masashi Nomura (Chukyo University)
Masayuki Oishi (Tohoku Gakuin University)
Jun Omune (Kansai Gaidai University)
The minimalist theory of syntax has been advanced since The Minimalist Program, whichcontains several papers by Noam Chomsky, was published in 1995. A number of important
revisions have been made (e.g. Chomsky (1995, 2004, 2015)), and the core syntactic operations
have been ‘simplified,’ following the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT). The SMT posits that
language is a perfect system, called the Faculty of Language (FL), meeting interface conditions
such as Full Interpretation. Understood in this way, the FL, an organ of the body (or a modular
system in the brain), just like any other natural objects, conforms to the laws of nature.
Chomsky (2005) calls them the ‘third-factor’ principles. The minimalist investigation,
pursuing the SMT, also addresses the problem of evolvability, that is, the evolution of thelanguage capacity, which is taken to be a key concept to understand the nature of the FL. Given
the sudden emergence of the language capacity on the evolutionary timescale (see Berwick andChomsky (2017), among others), the number of ‘language-unique’ operations are expected tobe minimum, ideally limited to one and only one. Such a sole operation is now called Merge,
the simplest structure-building operation that forms a set, formulated as (1) (Chomsky (2013,2015)).
(1)

Merge (a, b) = {a, b}

When this Merge operation applies ‘externally,’ it takes two distinct objects and forms anunordered set. In contrast, if Merge applies ‘internally,’ it takes two objects, one of which iscontained in the other. We call the former external Merge (EM), and the latter internal Merge(IM)—IM corresponds to Move in the earlier minimalist framework. Thus, just one operation,Merge, ensures the basic properties of the FL, namely discrete infinity and displacement.
Crucially, Merge applies ‘freely,’ regardless of whether this is external or internal (seeChomsky (2015), among others). This operation is no longer a triggered operation as in thesystem of the probe-goal agreement (see Chomsky (2001)). In other words, applying Merge
freely suggests that the current model is not ‘crash proof’ (see Frampton and Gutmann (2002));
it generates deviant linguistic expressions. This is a natural assumption because our brain (ormind) is able to recognize and have some forms of interpretation for deviant expressions
themselves.
However, how free is free Merge? Does free Merge allow extensions such as parallel Merge

1

(Citko (2005)), late Merge (Fox and Nissenbaum (1999)), sideward Merge (Nunes (2001)),
and counter-cyclic IM without replacement/infixing (Epstein et al. (2012))? Chomsky (2017)
addressed these questions in his recent Arizona lectures (March 2017) and particularly in hisReading lecture (May 2017), identified a flaw in the formulation of Merge, and revised Merge
to MERGE, an operation applying to workspace (WS); MERGE maps WS onto WS'. The
notion of WS has been tacitly assumed, because to generate {XP, YP}, XP and YP must beconstructed independently. But the notion of WS had been left unclear, and nobody had asked
what WS is and how it works. In his recent lectures, Chomsky examined the nature of the WS
and how freely MERGE applies, under the general conditions (called ‘seven desiderata’) anddemonstrated that under MERGE, parallel Merge, late Merge, and other extensions of Merge
do not surface. This MERGE-based analysis has a strong implication that pair-Merge, which
is an independent operation forming an ordered pair (see (2)), motivated by the asymmetricproperty of adjunction, is no longer available, provided that forming an ordered pair (e.g. headmovement) is a departure from the simplest Merge (1).
(2)

Pair-Merge (a, b) = <a, b>

Conceptually, the elimination of pair-Merge is desirable, given evolvability (and simplicity)(see Chomsky et al. (2017: 25)), but it poses a serious empirical problem; we must find a way
to explain the ubiquitous phenomena of adjunction under MERGE.
In this workshop, we will review the core empirical cases motivating pair-Merge (including
both head movement and phrasal adjunction), and then explore possible approaches to these
phenomena under MERGE. One such approach is to formulate pair-Merge under MERGE,
restricting its departure to be minimum. Another approach is to eliminate pair-Merge anddeduce its desirable effects from other independently motivated operations such as Transfer orExternalization. Or alternatively, one might argue that the asymmetries exhibited by adjunction
are deducible from how MERGE applies in the course of a derivation. We will discuss in detail
generative procedures involving pair-Merge of heads (Chomsky (2015)), and phrasal
adjunction under the MERGE-based model.
The workshop aims at discussing various issues related to pair-Merge, in particular the statusof pair-Merge under MERGE. To make this workshop accessible to students and researchers
from all levels, it includes the brief introduction on recent development in the minimalist
investigation (including Chomsky’s Arizona/Reading lectures and Chomsky et al. (2017)).
Selected References
Berwick and Chomsky (2017) “Why Only Us: Recent Questions and Answers,” Journal of
Neurolinguistics 43, 166–177.
Chomsky, Noam (1995) The Minimalist Program, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Chomsky, Noam (2001) “Derivation by Phase,” Ken Hale: A Life in Language, ed. by Michael2

Kenstowicz, 1–52, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Chomsky, Noam (2004) “Beyond Explanatory Adequacy,” Structures and Beyond: The
Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 3, ed. by Adriana Belletti, 104–131, Oxford
University Press, Oxford.
Chomsky, Noam (2013) “Problems of Projection,” Lingua 130, 33–49.
Chomsky, Noam (2015) “Problems of Projection: Extensions,” Structures, Strategies andBeyond: Studies in Honour of Adriana Belletti, ed. by Elisa Di Domenico, Cornelia
Hamann, and Simona Matteini, 3–16, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Chomsky, Noam (2017) A talk given at the workshop entitled “Generative Linguistics in the
21st Century: The Evidence and the Rhetoric,” the University of Reading, May 11, 2017.
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?init=quick&q=University%20of%20Reading%
20chomsky&tas=0.21866556606255472.
Chomsky, Noam, Ángel J. Gallego, and Dennis Ott (2017) “Generative Grammar and theFaculty of Language: Insights, Questions, and Challenges (2nd version),” unpublishedmanuscript. lingbuzz/003507.
Citko, Barbara (2005) “On the Nature of Merge: External Merge, Internal Merge, and Parallel
Merge,” Linguistic Inquiry 36, 475–496.
Epstein, Samuel D., Hisatsugu Kitahara, and T. Daniel Seely (2012) “Structure Building That
Can’t Be,” Ways of Structure Building, ed. by Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria and Vidal
Valmala, 253–270, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Fox, Danny and Jon Nissenbaum (1999) “Extraposition and Scope: A Case for Overt QR,”WCCFL 18, 132–144.
Frampton, John and Sam Gutmann (2002) “Crash-Proof Syntax,” Derivation and Explanationin the Minimalist Program, ed. by Samuel D. Epstein and T. Daniel Seely, 90–105,Blackwell, Oxford.
Nunes, Jairo (2001) “Sideward Movement,” Linguistic Inquiry 32, 303–344.

3