ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we review and consider consequences of recent developments in the Minimalist Program, focused on Chomsky’s most recent theory, Chomsky et al. (2017), a series of his latest lectures, and extensive personal communication. A central proposal is that simplest, unified MERGE does not operate directly on syntactic objects but rather on a workspace – the set of syntactic objects available for computation. This reconceived form of MERGE operates in accord with 3rd factor, i.e. language-independent laws regarding symbolic computation, including the 3rd factor principles of Minimal Search and Determinacy (the latter hypothesizing that MERGE is well-defined, as a function with a determinate output, and hence the output of MERGE can contain at most one accessible copy of any given syntactic object). We then argue that among the advantages of this framework is the deduction of the stipulative, syntax-internal constraints, the Proper Binding Condition (Fiengo 1977) and the Extension Condition (Chomsky 1995). Finally, adopting the 3rd factor principle of Determinacy (that governs MERGE, employing Minimal Search) delimited by the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC), we argue that Takano–Müller’s influential but currently unformulable constraint (TMC) regarding remnant movement (RM) is deducible from the interaction of these independently motivated 3rd factor principles.
