Exploring Merge: A new form of sideward movement
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Yuji Takano
Abstract
This paper explores Merge and proposes a new form of sideward movement (double sideward movement) carried out by a new application of External Merge. Double sideward movement occurs in the following way: given a syntactic object S containing XP and YP, Merge applies to XP and YP, and creates {XP, YP} outside S, thus causing XP and YP to undergo sideward movement at the same time. It is argued that multiple clefts (cleft sentences with multiple phrases in the focus position) in Japanese are derived by double sideward movement of the multiple focus phrases and that this derivation is responsible for certain surprising properties of Japanese multiple clefts, some well known and others newly discovered, including the lack of island effects and the presence and absence of clausemate effects. Other consequences are discussed for the nature of operator movement and scrambling as well as for restrictions on the application of Merge.
Acknowledgements
Parts of this paper have been presented in a symposium at the Thirty-Fourth Conference of the English Linguistic Society of Japan as well as at Keio University, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Academia Sinica, National Tsing Hua University, and Nanzan University. I thank the audiences for their helpful comments and questions, especially Edith Aldridge, Željko Bošković, Tomohiro Fujii, Kenshi Funakoshi, Caroline Heycock, Hideki Kishimoto, Hisatsugu Kitahara, Masatoshi Koizumi, Wei-wen Roger Liao, Jonah Lin, Jo-wang Lin, Masashi Nomura, Masao Ochi, Satoshi Oku, Masaki Sano, Chih-hsiang Shu, Koji Sugisaki, Daiko Takahashi, Masahiko Takahashi, Kensuke Takita, Shigeo Tonoike, Dylan Tsai, Asako Uchibori, and Akira Watanabe. In preparing this paper, I have particularly benefited from discussions I had with Toshifusa Oka, Mamoru Saito, Hiroaki Tada, and Hiroyuki Ura. Finally, I am grateful to reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper, which helped greatly to improve it. The research reported here was conducted as part of the collaborative research project “Generative Perspectives on the Syntax and Acquisition of Japanese” at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.
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