The Linguistic Review 2015; Aop

The Linguistic Review 2015; aop Željko Bošković* Introduction DOI 10.1515/tlr-2015-0012 The operation Merge, which combines two elements X and Y into {X,Y}, is minimally required for language. A long-standing assumption of the generative grammar has been that the nature of the resulting object needs to be specified. To take a concrete example, when a verbal and a nominal element are merged, as in the ergative structure in (1), information needs to be provided regarding whether the resulting object is verbal or nominal in nature. In the case of (1), the resulting object is verbal in nature. In slightly more technical terms, arrive projects in (1), labeling the resulting object. (1) {arrive, John} Syntactic representations are then taken to be hierarchical structures involving labeled objects. In the Government and Binding framework (GB), labels were essentially provided by the X-bar theory, i.e. they were part of structure building. The early minimalism has kept the gist of this approach. The Inclusiveness Condition, which states that the computational system can only manipulate the lexical items entering the computation–it cannot introduce anything new – is a fundamental principle of Minimalism. The Inclusiveness Condition is essentially a ban on creationism in the syntax. Under the Inclusiveness Condition, syntactic representations are bare in that they cannot include bar level distinctions, which are not present in the lexicon. Still, the early minimalism kept the gist of the GB approach to labeling, adapting it to the Bare Phrase Structure system. Thus, for Chomsky (1995), labeling is part of the definition of Merge: when X and Y are merged, either X or Y projects, i.e. labels the resulting object.1 This can be represented as in (2), where X is the label of the syntactic object formed by merging XandY.2 1 See, however, Citko (2008) on the possibility of both X and Y projecting. 2 Interestingly, Chomsky (1995: 396) suggests that it is the interfaces that require the information provided by labeling, anticipating in this respect Chomsky’s (2013, 2015) conclusions discussed below. *Corresponding author: Željko Bošković, Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA, E-mail: [email protected] Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 12/25/15 5:39 AM 2 Željko Bošković (2) Merge(X,Y) = {X, {X,Y}} One question that immediately arose is how to determine whether X or Y projects. For movement (i.e. external Merge), it was assumed that the target projects (see for example Chomsky 1995: 256); for non-movement cases (i.e. internal Merge), the issue was left open in Chomsky (1995), the implicit assumption being that in principle, either X or Y can project, though in many cases something would go wrong if one of the two projects. This would for example be the case if in the transitive structure in (3), John projects after merging with kiss, as in (3a), instead of kiss, as in (3b). (3) a. {Peter, {John, {kiss, John}}} b. {Peter, {kiss, {kiss, John}}} The assumption that with movement, the target projects has been questioned. Thus, Donati (2006) argues that in free relatives like (4), the moved wh-element projects after it moves, merging with the clause, this being the reason why free relatives are nominal in nature with respect to a number of properties (see also Cecchetto and Donati 2015; Citko 2008). (4) John ate what I cooked. A more fundamental proposal was made in Collins (2002), who argues that labels themselves can be, hence should be, eliminated (for a more recent discussion, see Collins 2014). Collins (2002) thus argues for a label-free theory, simplifying (2) as in (5), where structure building through Merge takes place without recourse to labels. (5) Merge(X,Y) = {X,Y} Collins discusses how various mechanisms that were previously assumed to involve recourse to labels, like various generalizations of the traditional X-bar theory and the Minimal Link Condition, can be implemented in a label-free theory.3 (For much relevant discussion, the reader is also referred to Seely 2006, who observes that the postulation of labels as part of the syntactic object 3 Collins also examines how selection (i.e. subcategorization) would work in a label-free theory, though, as discussed in Seely (2006), this mechanism does raise non-trivial issues in this respect. Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 12/25/15 5:39 AM Introduction 3 formed by Merge raises several questions which trivially dissolve in a label-free theory; Seely also observes that the elimination of labels requires a derivational approach to c-command (see Epstein 1999), the label-free theory being incom- patible with the standard representational approach to c-command). Chomsky (2013), which is the starting point for the articles in this volume, also assumes that labels are not encoded in the output of Merge, i.e. that labeling is not part of the definition of Merge, thus adopting (5) rather than (2), Merge being a set-formation operation that combines two syntactic objects (SOs) without label projection. However, Chomsky keeps the traditional assumption that when X and Y are merged, the nature of the resulting object needs to be specified. Taking a concrete case again, it needs to be specified that the object resulting from the merge operation in (1) is verbal in nature. Crucially, Chomsky argues that syntax itself does not require this information; the information is required by the interfaces so that syntactic objects can be intepreted. In other words, Chomsky assumes that although there is nothing wrong with unlabeled objects in the syntax, such objects are uninterpretable. Chomsky then provides an algorithm that specifies labels (more informally, the nature of an object formed by Merge), which applies at the point of transfer to the interfaces, given that labeling is interface-driven. Under this view, labeling does not apply as part of Merge, as in Chomsky (1995). In this respect, Chomsky (2013) follows Collins (2002) and Seely (2006). However, syntax is still not fully label- free, as in Collins (2002), and Seely (2006), labeling taking place at the phasal level, when the syntactic structure is sent to the interfaces. It should, however, be noted that it is not obvious that labels are indeed needed for interpretation. In fact, formal semantics models typically do not make recourse to labels. Even if labels are needed for intepretation, a question arises if they are needed in all cases, which opens up a potentially interesting avenue for further research. In this respect, Chametzky (2000), Hornstein and Nunes (2008), Hunter (2010), and Bošković (in press) argue that adjunction does not require labeling for interpretation, which under Chomsky (2013) would entail that the result of adjunction is not labeled at all. In fact, Bošković (in press) suggests that not labeling should be taken as the defining property of what is referred to as adjunction, segmentation being dispensable (for a different labeling-based perspective on adjunction, see Yoo 2015). The claim that labels are needed for interpretation should then be taken as programmatic, to be subjected to careful investigation. This, however, should not be considered a weakness of the overall system. On the contrary, that the system opens up new areas of research only contri- butes to its inherent interest. Previous approaches to labeling essentially stipu- lated that labeling was necessary to permit further applications of Merge, with Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 12/25/15 5:39 AM 4 Željko Bošković Merge applying only to labeled structures. If labeling is not part of Merge, a number of interesting questions arise. There are essentially three positions here: (i) labeling as part of Merge, as in Chomsky (1995), where labeling is always triggered immediately by the Merge operation itself; (ii) label-free system, as in Collins (2002), and Seely (2006), where labels are eliminated; and (iii), what I will call “label-or-not” system, where labeling is not triggered by Merge itself but labels are not (completely) eliminated. From a strictly research perspective, (iii) is the most interesting situation, due to a host of intriguing questions that it raises. As noted above, Chomsky (2013) suggests that labels are needed for interpretation. Questions arise here whether this is indeed the case and whether this holds uniformly for all cases (cf. the above suggestion about adjunction). Chomsky’s interpretation-driven approach to labeling leads to labeling taking place at the phasal level. Phases are taken to determine the points of spell-out, i.e. when the structure is sent to the interfaces. If labeling occurs strictly for interpretative reasons, we would expect it to occur at this point. As noted in Bošković (this volume), a serious chicken-or-the-egg style question then arises: Bošković (2015) argues that phase- hood determination requires labeling, i.e. phases do not really exist prior to labeling: to know whether something is a phase we need to know its label (see Bošković 2015 for evidence that unlabeled elements cannot be phases; it is shown in that work that the well-known ban on movement out of moved elements can be deduced given that unlabeled objects cannot be phases). Since phases determine the points of spell-out, without any labeling structure cannot be sent to the interfaces, which in turn is necessary for labeling under a purely interpretative approach to labeling. Bošković (this volume) observes that this problem dissolves if head-complement merger is labeled immediately since this is actually all that is needed to determine the points of spell-out. However, there would then need to be a syntactic reason for labeling in this particular case, assuming position (iii) from above, rather than position (i), where labeling is automatic.

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