Labeling through Spell-Out
-
Kensuke Takita
,
Nobu Goto
Abstract
This paper proposes that a particular conception of the Spell-Out operation provides a hitherto unnoticed way of determining a label of otherwise unlabeled syntactic objects. It is shown that this proposal simplifies the grammar and gains several theoretical and empirical consequences, eliminating certain unnecessary complications in Chomsky’s (2013) framework where some instances of movement are forced by the need to label. More specifically, we point out that Chomsky’s basic idea behind the implementation of labeling through movement, which assumes that a copy left behind by movement is invisible to minimal search, is not only incompatible with the copy theory of movement but also violates the No Tampering Condition. We also point out that his claim that movement is required for labeling has a redundancy problem regarding the motivation of movement, which should be avoided in the Minimalist Program. Then, we argue that the problems are easily solved if we ensure that a singleton set left after the application of Spell-Out is automatically converted into its single member. The proposed system of labeling that makes use of Spell-Out not only removes some unnecessary complications of Chomsky (2013) but also gives several novel answers to classical questions concerning the binarity of phrase structures and the structures of small clauses and there-constructions.
Acknowledgement
We are very grateful to Jun Abe, Michael Barrie, Lilian Haegeman, Richard Kayne, Hisa Kitahara, W.-W. Roger Liao, Hiroki Narita, Mamoru Saito, Yosuke Sato, Koji Shimamura, Masanobu Sorida, W.-T. Dylan Tsai, and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments, questions and suggestions. We also thank the participants of Keio Linguistics Colloquium, held at Keio University in January 2014, and GLOW in Asia X, held at National Tsing Hua University in May 2014, where earlier versions of this paper were presented. Special thanks go to Željko Bošković for encouraging us to submit our paper to this volume, as well as his comments on earlier versions of this paper. All remaining errors are of course ours.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- In Memoriam of Yoshiyuki Shibata
- Introduction
- On the timing of labeling: Deducing Comp-trace effects, the Subject Condition, the Adjunct Condition, and tucking in from labeling
- Head-head relations in Problems of projection
- Phase cancellation by external pair-merge of heads
- Labeling, maximality and the head – phrase distinction
- (A) Case for labeling: labeling in languages without ɸ-feature agreement
- Labeling through Spell-Out
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- In Memoriam of Yoshiyuki Shibata
- Introduction
- On the timing of labeling: Deducing Comp-trace effects, the Subject Condition, the Adjunct Condition, and tucking in from labeling
- Head-head relations in Problems of projection
- Phase cancellation by external pair-merge of heads
- Labeling, maximality and the head – phrase distinction
- (A) Case for labeling: labeling in languages without ɸ-feature agreement
- Labeling through Spell-Out
