AbstractWe use fieldwork data about cross‐clausal scrambling in Balkar (Turkic) to clarify the nature of movement and its constraints. Balkar has a variety of embedded nominalized clauses, with different subject cases and possibilities for movement. Clauses with nominative (nom) subjects permit cross‐clausal object extraction but not subject extraction. In contrast, clauses with accusative subjects permit both such movements, although movement of the subject is required for object extraction. Finally, clauses with genitive subjects permit only subject extraction. We argue that these facts provide evidence for the following proposals: (i) multiple specifiers are usually possible provided that tucking‐in applies; (ii) the highest of a phase's multiple specifiers is privileged for accessibility; (iii) movement is constrained by anti‐locality (a ban on short movements); and (iv) Balkar DPs do not permit multiple specifiers. These factors are intertwined informatively in Balkar, and are supported by additional facts about possessors, binding, and covert movement.

AbstractThis paper argues for a unification of two seemingly unrelated phenomena from unrelated language families: Verb Second in Germanic, and Conjunct versus Independent Order in Algonquian. It is argued that both reflect the possibility of the verb moving to C. While in Germanic this results in word order differences, in Algonquian V‐to‐C movement is detectable only via morphological alternations in agreement morphology. Under this view, Conjunct/Independent agreement and V2 are merely distinct reflexes of the same underlying process. This opens up new avenues of research in relation to V‐to‐C movement, framing it as a parametric option with potentially very different surface results in different languages depending on the setting of other parameters.

AbstractRecent research suggests that verb echo answers (VEAs) to a polar question in Japanese are derived by sluicing: the V head moves to C, and the complement of C, TP, undergoes deletion, stranding the verbal complex in C. Two pieces of evidence are provided for the view: adjunct inclusive interpretation and voice mismatch, neither of which is conclusive, as shown here. One consequence of the sluicing analysis is that VEAs reverse scope. We show that the semantic shift has nothing to do with the scope reversal. Our conclusion is that VEAs are unambiguously derived by multiple applications of argument ellipsis. We also advance an alternative explanation of the obligatory wide scope for focus phrases.

AbstractTwo structure‐building operations are currently posited in minimalist theory: an operation forming sets (set merge), and an operation forming ordered pairs (pair‐merge). I argue that pair‐merge is sufficient to generate syntactic relations, so set merge, also called simple merge, should be eliminated from syntactic theory on grounds of simplicity. This conclusion requires reevaluating the relationship between structure‐building and labeling of constituents for the expression of syntactic relations, because labeling plays a crucial role in this comparison of theories according to the simplicity metric. An existing labeling hypothesis, specifically Chomsky's Labeling Algorithm, is shown not to have any advantage claimed for it by comparison with the just pair‐merge hypothesis proposed here. An advantage of the only pair‐merge hypothesis is that it provides a more principled origin for the inherent asymmetry in the c‐command relation that does not follow from a theory that includes set merge.

AbstractBare nominals in Wolof can occur in the object position and they must be adjacent to the verb that subcategorizes for them. This is a property usually attributed to pseudo noun incorporation (PNI). However, there are two circumstances under which this adjacency requirement is obviated: a DP is introduced between the subject and the PNI‐ed object, or the latter is ‐moved. While these are disparate phenomena, a dependent case analysis of nominal licensing can account for PNI in Wolof. I assume that all nominals must be licensed with case, with case assignment being calculated in terms of dependent case. If this is not possible, a last resort strategy arises, namely surface adjacency with the verb. This analysis provides a unified analysis of PNI in Wolof.

AbstractTwo fundamental tasks of syntactic inquiry are to identify the elementary structure‐building operations and to determine what properties they have and why. This article aims to bring us closer to those goals by investigating Merge. Two recent definitions of Merge are evaluated. It is argued that both have significant strengths but also some drawbacks, and that set‐theoretic definitions of Merge in general face conceptual problems. It is proposed that Merge is not set‐theoretic but graph‐theoretic in nature: the syntactic objects it operates on and creates are (bare‐phrase‐structure‐compliant) phrase‐structure trees. Two new formal definitions of Merge are proposed and evaluated. One obeys the No‐Tampering Condition but makes it unclear why Merge() satisfies only one selectional feature of , not all of them. The other accounts for that observation but narrowly violates the No‐Tampering Condition. The larger picture that emerges is one in which Merge is a graph‐theoretic, not a set‐theoretic, operation.

AbstractIn “Subordination and Binary Branching”, a recent (2023) Syntax paper, Ad Neeleman and colleagues proposed a new analysis of subordination. The main aim of this paper is to refute that analysis, using data from the coordination of unlike categories and unlike grammatical functions. Additionally, building on Neeleman et al.'s observations about the arbitrarily ‐ary—not just binary—nature of coordination, I sketch a more Minimalist approach to subordination and coordination that is devoid of the problems that Neeleman et al.'s analysis faces, but otherwise covers a similar range of data. On this approach, “subordination” is a synonym of “result of PairMerge” and “coordination” is a synonym of “result of SetMerge”, where SetMerge is understood as an operation creating an arbitrary set, as opposed to the usual more specialized Merge operation, which creates a binary set.

AbstractDespite the lack of consensus on English facts, this study demonstrates that both parasitic gap (PG) and across‐the‐board (ATB) constructions in Mandarin Chinese exhibit paralle effects in variable binding reconstruction, while also displaying asymmetries in gap licensing categories. I argue that these patterns in Mandarin Chinese align with the sideward movement approach, supporting a version of the unified approach to deriving both constructions. Specifically, the gaps in question are filled by variables, consistent with both constructions being derived via sideward movement. The observed asymmetries lend support to the view that the licensing of ATB gaps is more permissive than that of PGs, as additional conditions (such as the Parallelsim Requirement) on coordinate structures can license sideward movement in ATB sentences.

AbstractThis paper examines the way in which scope‐taking of again interacts with word order in the English particle verb alternation. Small‐clause approaches to the particle verb alternation differ from most competing approaches in taking both verb‐particle‐object and verb‐object‐particle orders to contain a result state‐denoting small clause. An expectation of this approach on a structural approach to again ambiguity is that both orders should admit restitutive again readings. Results from a controlled judgment survey of 73 North American English speakers bear out this prediction.

AbstractĀ‐extraction of possessors in West Circassian is constrained in a puzzling way: the possessor of an ergative or applied argument DP may not undergo clausebound wh‐movement, but long‐distance possessor extraction across a clausal boundary is grammatical. Based on the variable islandhood of these DPs, this paper argues for an agree‐based approach to phasehood. Phase opacity is treated as intervention defective intervention, with the phase intervening between the probe and the goal. Defective intervention does not take place if the corresponding phase has independently entered an Agree relation with the movement‐triggering probe. Islandhood is thus correctly predicted to be contextually determined: in West Circassian, the difference between clausebound and long‐distance possessor extraction is conditioned by the set of agreement features on the local movement‐triggering probe: a wh‐feature on C in the case of clausebound extraction and a successive‐cyclic edge feature on embedded C in the case of long‐distance wh‐movement. Additionally, the account appeals to the opacity of phase edges to explain the contrast between DPs that display islandhood effects (ergative and applied argument DPs) and constituents that are uniformly transparent for subextraction (the absolutive DP and postpositional phrases).