On Multidominance and Linearization

Abstract

This article centers around two questions: What is the relation between movement and structure sharing, and how can complex syntactic structures be linearized? It is shown that regular movement involves internal remerge, and sharing or ‘sideward movement’ external remerge. Without ad hoc restric-tions on the input, both options follow from Merge. They can be represented in terms of multidominance. Although more structural freedom ensues than standardly thought, the grammar is not completely unconstrained: Argu-ably, proliferation of roots is prohibited. Furthermore, it is explained why external remerge has somewhat different consequences than internal re-merge. For instance, apparent non-local behavior is attested. At the PF inter-face, the linearization of structures involving remerge is non-trivial. A cen-tral problem is identified, apart from the general issue why remerged mater-ial is only pronounced once: There are seemingly contradictory linearization demands for internal and external remerge. This can be resolved by taking into account the different structural configurations. It is argued that the line-arization is a PF procedure involving a recursive structure scanning algo-rithm that makes use of the inherent asymmetry between sister nodes im-posed by the operation of Merge.