Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a coherent and focused attempt at understanding the nature of Merge from two distinct but clearly related angles: theoretical syntax and the neuroscience of the human brain. It examines relation between the central operation of Merge and other putative operations postulated in syntax. The book discusses the development of the syntactic theory that has reached the concept of Merge. It proposes that the notion of "Merge-generability" is perhaps the only relevant notion for processing syntactic structures. The book deals with complex interactions between hierarchical structures and other salient factors such as linear order and semantic information. It discusses formal and abstract models that parametrically predict the activation modulations in the brain regions specialized for linguistic computations. The book suggests a promising direction for future research on the computational principles of syntax that should deepen understanding of uniquely human mental faculties.