Theoretical Comparative Syntax

7   Symmetry in syntax

Merge and Demerge

with Yuji Takano

1   Introduction

The theory of phrase structure has been playing an increasingly important role in the theory of grammar as one of the few remaining core components of the human language faculty. As the “minimalist program” (Chomsky 1993a) has been developed, a variety of the subcomponents of grammar that had been assumed in earlier work have been critically scrutinized in light of minimalist assumptions and, in many cases, eliminated from grammar as conceptually unwarranted from the strictly minimalist viewpoint. However, to the extent that linguistic expressions in human languages have hierarchical structures, not just strings of words and formatives, which is a fairly well-established ...