External Set‐Merge of Heads and Composite Probing: the Case of Locative Inversion in English and Chinese1

Abstract

AbstractThe goal of this paper is three‐fold. First, adopting Chomsky's (2013, 2015) Merge‐α model of syntactic derivation, I advance the hypothesis that composite probing (Coon & Bale 2014; van Urk 2015) is made available in English and Chinese to derive locative inversion via external set‐Merge of C and T, forming {C, T} (see also Saito 2012 and Epstein et al. 2016). Second, I argue that English {C, T} hosts a non‐selective Ā‐probe, whereas the Chinese counterpart a relativized one. Importantly, I propose that this crosslinguistic contrast in the non‐selective/relativized nature of a composite probe is deducible from the articulated structure in the left periphery and external set‐Merge of heads. Third, what is crucial for the Merge‐α model is the set of independent principles that regulate the generative capacity of free Merge by examining its varied outputs. I contend that the need of Case valuation on DPs, the activity of the φ‐probe, and the Intervention Constraint all play crucial roles in English to exclude some structures built based on the introduction of {C, T} and its composite probe. Couched in the Merge‐α framework, this paper suggests a new way to restrictively model the variation in A/Ā properties of movement across languages and across individual constructions language‐internally. The proposed approach derives the relevant variation without stipulating construction‐specific mechanisms or a variation in the nature of probes — the variation comes from the C‐heads that merge with T prior to probing and how it interacts with independent syntactic principles.