Merge: Binarity in (Multidominant) Syntax (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

An argument that Merge is binary but its binarity refers to syntactic positions rather than objects.

In this book, Barbara Citko and Martina Gračanin-Yüksek examine the constraints on Merge—the basic structure-building operation in minimalist syntax—from a multidominant perspective. They maintain that Merge is binary, but argue that the binarity of Merge refers to syntactic positions Merge relates: what has typically been formulated as a constraint that prevents Merge from combining more than two syntactic objects is a constraint on Merge's relating more than two syntactic positions.