Labeling and other syntactic operations

Abstract

This article proposes certain modifications to the minimalist system, among which labeling plays a prominent role. It argues for a specific model of cyclic Transfer, where every operation Merge constitutes a phase. The operation labeling is a prerequisite of Transfer and can be delayed. This allows syntactic objects to escape from a phase. Because of the early Transfer, movement is triggered by a greedy feature on the moving syntactic object. It will be shown that the proposed system can straightforwardly derive the following movement phenomena: freezing effects, order preservation in multiple movement, the prohibition of headless XP-movement and the ban on acyclic combinations of incorporations. It will be also shown that the proposal has certain advantages over Chomsky's minimalist system.

Gender ‘Translation’ And Distributed Gender: Evidence From The Norwegian DP And Language Mixing*

“…There are several proposals in the literature to the effect that syntax operates on a direct compositionality basis, i.e., that syntax and semantics work together in tandem, see, e.g., papers in Barker & Jacobson (2007); see also Bouchard (1995Bouchard ( , 2013. A similar approach is advanced in Biskup (2017) where it is assumed that "every operation Merge produces a phase" which is then transferred to the interfaces. 19 For our purposes, this means that not only the noun stem, but also NUMP, DEFP, etc.…”