Mother Merge and Her Children1

This paper examines in detail the proposition that a set of fundamental syntactic relations (domination, sisterhood, c-command, etc) can be founded in the computational operation Merge, itself taken to be fundamental and indispensable. In doing this, it pursues one aspect of minimalist methodology in an unusually rigorous fashion. The outcome of the investigation is that Chomsky’s initial approach to this issue, as outlined in ‘Minimalist Inquiries,’ has a number of unattractive consequences. Alternatives avoiding some of these consequences are explored, and the proposal that asymmetric c-command, rather than general c-command, should be taken as fundamental is considered in detail. It is further argued that claims to exclude some well-known relations (e.g. head-specifier) on principled grounds cannot be sustained. Finally, the recent proposal that probe-goal, a restricted variant of ccommand, should be accommodated in the set of fundamental relations at the expense of sisterhood is shown to be inadequate.