ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the notion of Search discussed by Kato et al., which was proposed as a way to unify the otherwise disparate relation-formation operations, including Agree, chain-formation, and binding. Human language in its essence is a system that generates an infinite set of hierarchically structured syntactic objects (SOs) which in turn can be used to fulfill various cognitive needs, such as to relate "meaning" and "sound". The literature seems to share the conclusion that Merge counts as a "virtual conceptual necessity", and hence may be the most elementary and the most basic operation of syntax. According to Chomsky, Merge is an operation that takes n objects and combines them by forming the set of the objects. Merge has taken to be an indispensable basic operation of the syntax of human language, since it has the fundamental function of constructing an infinite set of hierarchically structured SOs, without which human language simply cannot have the property of discrete infinity.
