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In:Minimalism and Beyond: Radicalizing the interfaces
Edited by Peter Kosta, Steven L. Franks, Teodora Radeva-Bork and Lilia Schürcks
[Language Faculty and Beyond 11] 2014
► pp. 169–194

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Chains in Minimalism

 | Yokohama National University
 | University of Maryland
Published online: 24 September 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.11.07mar
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.
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Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Chomsky, Noam
2024. Genuine explanation. In Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition, ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
Mizuguchi, Manabu
2019. Ambiguous Labeling and Full Interpretation. Studia Linguistica 73:3 ► pp. 563 ff. DOI logo
Nunes, Jairo
2018. Linearizing Chains at LF. In Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences, ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Krivochen, Diego Gabriel
2016. Tokens vs. Copies: Displacement Revisited. Studia Linguistica 70:3 ► pp. 250 ff. DOI logo
Krivochen, Diego Gabriel
2023. Towards a theory of syntactic workspaces: neighbourhoods and distances in a lexicalised grammar. The Linguistic Review 40:2 ► pp. 311 ff. DOI logo
Rouveret, Alain
2015. Références bibliographiques. In Arguments minimalistes, DOI logo

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