Merge

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(linguistics) mer
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n
For the phonological
term, see Merger Wik
(phonology). tion
ary,
Merge (usually
the
capitalized) is one of the
free
basic operations in
the Minimalist Program, dicti
a leading approach onar
to generative syntax, y.
when two syntactic
objects are combined to
form a new syntactic
unit (a set). Merge also
has the property
of recursion in that it
may apply to its own
output: the objects
combined by Merge are
either lexical items or
sets that were
themselves formed by
Merge. This recursive
property of Merge has
been claimed to be a
fundamental
characteristic that
distinguishes language
from other cognitive
faculties. As Noam
Chomsky (1999) puts it,
Merge is "an
indispensable operation
of a recursive system ...
which takes two
syntactic objects A and
B and forms the new
object G={A,B}" (p. 2).[1]

Contents

o
o


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 o

Mechanisms of
Merge[edit]
Within the Minimalist
Program, syntax is
derivational, and Merge
is the structure-building
operation. Merge is
assumed to have
certain formal properties
constraining syntactic
structure, and is
implemented with
specific mechanisms. In
terms of a merge-base
theory of language
acquisition,
complements and
specifiers are simply
notations for first-merge
(= "complement-of"
[head-complement]),
and later second-merge
(= "specifier-of"
[specifier-head], with
merge always forming
to a head. First-merge
establishes only a set
{a, b} and is not an
ordered pair--e.g., an
{N, N}-compound of
'boat-house' would
allow the ambiguous
readings of either 'a
kind of house' and/or 'a
kind of boat'. It is only
with second-merge that
order is derived out of a
set {a {a, b}} which
yields
the recursive properties
of syntax--e.g., a
'House-boat' {house
{house, boat}} now
reads unambiguously
only as a 'kind of boat'.
It is this property of
recursion that allows for
projection and labeling
of a phrase to take
place;[2] in this case, that
the Noun 'boat' is the
head of the compound,
and 'house' acting as a
kind of
specifier/modifier.
External-merge (first-
merge) establishes
substantive 'base
structure' inherent to the
VP, yielding
theta/argument
structure, and may go
beyond the lexical-
category VP to involve
the functional-category
light verb vP. Internal-
merge (second-merge)
establishes more formal
aspects related to edge-
properties of scope and
discourse-related
material pegged to CP.
In a Phase-based
theory, this twin vP/CP
distinction follows the
"duality of semantics"
discussed within
the Minimalist Program,
and is further developed
into a dual distinction
regarding a probe-goal
relation.[3] As a
consequence, at the
"external/first-merge-
only" stage, young
children would show an
inability to interpret
readings from a given
ordered pair, since they
would only have access
to the mental parsing of
a non-recursive set.
(See Roeper for a full
discussion of recursion
in child language
acquisition).[4] In addition
to word-order violations,
other more ubiquitous
results of a first-merge
stage would show that
children's initial
utterances lack the
recursive properties of
inflectional morphology,
yielding a strict Non-
inflectional stage-1,
consistent with an
incremental Structure
building model of child
language.[5]

Binary
branching[edit]
Merge takes two objects
α and β and combines
them, creating a binary
structure.
Feature
checking[edit]
In some variants of the
Minimalist Program
Merge is triggered
by feature checking,
e.g. the verb eat selects
the
noun cheesecake beca
use the verb has an
uninterpretable N-
feature [uN] ("u" stands
for "uninterpretable"),
which must be checked
(or deleted) due to full
interpretation.[6] By
saying that this verb has
a nominal
uninterpretable feature,
we rule out
such ungrammatical co
nstructions as *eat
beautiful (the verb
selects an adjective).
Schematically it can be
illustrated as:
Projection and
labeling[edit]
Recursion[edit]
External and
internal Merge[edit]
Chomsky (2001)
distinguishes between
external and internal
Merge: if A and B are
separate objects then
we deal with external
Merge; if either of them
is part of the other it is
internal Merge.[7]

Three
controversial
aspects of
Merge[edit]
Standard Merge (i.e. as
it is commonly
understood)
encourages one to
adopt three key
assumptions about the
nature of syntactic
structure and the faculty
of language: 1)
sentence structure is
generated bottom up in
the mind of speakers
(as opposed to top
down or left to right), 2)
all syntactic structure is
binary branching (as
opposed to n-ary
branching) and 3)
syntactic structure is
constituency-based (as
opposed to
dependency-based).
While these three
assumptions are taken
for granted for the most
part by those working
within the broad scope
of the Minimalist
Program, other theories
of syntax reject one or
more of them.
Merge is commonly
seen as merging
smaller constituents to
greater constituents
until the greatest
constituent, the
sentence, is reached.
This bottom-up view of
structure generation is
rejected by
representational (non-
derivational) theories
(e.g. Generalized
Phrase Structure
Grammar, Head-Driven
Phrase Structure
Grammar, Lexical
Functional Grammar,
most dependency
grammars, etc.), and it
is contrary to early work
in Transformational
Grammar. The phrase
structure
rules of context free
grammar, for instance,
were generating
sentence structure top
down.
Merge is usually
assumed to merge just
two constituents at a
time, a limitation that
results in tree structures
in which all branching is
binary. While the strictly
binary branching
structures have been
argued for in detail,
[8]
 one can also point to
a number of empirical
considerations that cast
doubt on these strictly
binary branching
structures, e.g. the
results of
standard constituency
tests.[9] For this reason,
most grammar theories
outside of Government
and Binding Theory and
the Minimalist Program
allow for n-ary
branching.
Merge merges two
constituents in such a
manner that these
constituents become
sister constituents and
are daughters of the
newly created mother
constituent. This
understanding of how
structure is generated is
constituency-based (as
opposed to
dependency-based).
Dependency grammars
(e.g. Meaning-Text
Theory, Functional
Generative
Description, Word
grammar) disagree with
this aspect of Merge,
since they take
syntactic structure to be
dependency-based.[10]

Comparison to
other
approaches[edit]
In other approaches
to generative syntax,
such as Head-driven
phrase structure
grammar, Lexical
functional grammar and
other types of
unification grammar, the
analogue to Merge is
the unification operation
of graph theory. In
these theories,
operations over
attribute-value matrices
(feature structures) are
used to account for
many of the same facts.
Though Merge is
usually assumed to be
unique to language, the
linguists Jonah
Katz and David
Pesetsky have argued
that the harmonic
structure of tonal
music is also a result of
the operation Merge.[11]
This notion of 'merge'
may in fact be related to
Fauconnier's 'blending'
notion in cognitive
linguistics.
Phrase structure
grammar[edit]
Phrase structure
grammar (PSG)
represents immediate
constituency relations
(i.e. how words group
together) as well as
linear precedence
relations (i.e. how words
are ordered). In a PSG,
a constituent contains at
least one member, but
has no upper bound. In
contrast, with Merge
theory, a constituent
contains at most two
members. Specifically,
in Merge theory, each
syntactic object is a
constituent.
X-bar theory[edit]
X-bar theory is a
template that claims
that all lexical items
project three levels of
structure: X, X', and XP.
Consequently, there is a
three-way distinction
between Head,
Complement,
and Specifier:





While the first
application of Merge is
equivalent to the Head-
Complement relation,
the second application
of Merge is equivalent
to the Specifier-Head
relation. However, the
two theories differ in the
claims they make about
the nature of the
Specifier-Head-
Complement (S-H-C)
structure. In X-bar
theory, S-H-C is a
primitive, an example of
this is
Kayne's antisymmetry t
heory. In a Merge
theory, S-H-C is
derivative.
See also[edit]


Notes[edit]
1.

2.

3.
4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.
 11.

References[edit]
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Merge, merging, or merger may refer to:

Contents

 1Concepts
 2Arts, entertainment, and media
 3Computer science
 4Other uses
 5See also

Concepts[edit]
 Merge (traffic), the reduction of the number of lanes
on a road
 Merge (linguistics), a basic syntactic operation in
generative syntax in the Minimalist Program
 Merger (politics), the combination of two or more
political or administrative entities
 Merger (phonology), phonological change whereby
originally separate phonemes come to be
pronounced exactly the same
 Mergers and acquisitions, the buying, selling,
dividing and combining of different companies

Arts, entertainment, and media[edit]

 Merger (band), a 1970s English reggae band
 Merging (play), a 2007 one act play written by
Charles Messina
 Merge Records, an indie-rock record label based in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
  Merge, a program broadcast by Lifetime

Computer science[edit]
 Merge (version control), to combine simultaneously
changed files in revision control
 Merge (software), a Virtual Machine Monitor
computer package for running MS-DOS or Windows
9x on x86 processors under UNIX
 Merge (SQL), a statement in SQL
 Merge algorithm, an algorithm for combining two or
more sorted lists into a single sorted one
 Mail merge, the production of multiple documents
from a single template form and a structured data
source
 Randomness merger, a function which combines
several, perhaps correlated, random variables into
one high-entropy random variable

Other uses[edit]
 Merger (horse) (born 1965), Canadian
Thoroughbred racehorse
 ME Research UK, formerly MERGE, a UK charity
funding biomedical research into Chronic fatigue
syndrome

See also[edit]
 The Merger (disambiguation)
 Merger doctrine (disambiguation)
 Combine (disambiguation)
 All pages with titles beginning with  Merge
 All pages with titles containing  Merge

This  disambiguation  page lists articles associated with the title Merge.

If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

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 This page was last edited on 11 February 2021, at 02:31 (UTC).
 Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using
this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
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