Chains in Minimalism

Abstract

This paper considers how the system identifies multiple occurrences of a syntactic object α as a chain, a set of copies. For Chomsky (1995, 2000, 2001), copies can arise only by movement (internal merge); lexical items introduced by external merge are stipulated to be distinct tokens, coded by indexation, or by introducing some other special concept of numeration, which violates the inclusiveness condition. We argue that this type/token dichotomy is unnecessary and that copies can be distinguished from repetitions in terms of syntactic context alone. This yields interesting situations where two arguments introduced by external merge may also be recognized as a chain, and we propose that obligatory control and parasitic gaps should be analyzed in exactly these terms.