ABSTRACT
A cursory look at available linguistic data suggests that the arrangement of forms and interpretations, though fed by unconstrained Merge, is by no means random or arbitrary. Noam Chomsky observes that external merge and internal merge modes of merge are systematically tied with quite different syntactic and semantic consequences. Chomsky's observation is that the duality of semantics finds a close correspondence to the bifurcation of external and internal merge: thus, external merge typically feeds d-structure interpretation, and Internal merge s-structure interpretation. However, external merge in head-movement is quite different in a number of respects from the canonical instances of external merge. The chapter discusses a theory of syntax in which linguistic derivation is fundamentally driven for stable representations characterized by featural symmetry. It describes remarks on the notion of endocentricity/asymmetry. The chapter proposes a theory of syntax in which linguistic derivation is fundamentally driven and geared for symmetry defined in terms of feature-equilibrium.
