Scrambling as internal merge: Why is it free?

Abstract

Chomsky (2023) has recently departed from supporting the influential Successive Cyclic Movement (SCM) hypothesis. Instead, he proposes that overt movement, or Internal Merge (IM), is strictly limited. He attributes the traditionally observed overt long-distance movement phenomena to interface (SM/CI) interpretations. Specifically, the internal argument (IA) object undergoes phase-internal IM to the periphery of v*P, but is then segregated from the current derivation and put in a box. Once insulated from the ongoing derivation, the IA object at the edge of v*P is no longer subject to the Merge operation. The abandonment of the SCM hypothesis raises numerous questions about various phenomena, particularly scrambling in Korean, which has been convincingly argued to involve overt movement (Saito 1985; Ko 2018). In investigating what constrains IM, we take a theta-theoretic approach following Chomsky (2023) and Kitahara and Seely (2024). As they suggest, IM in English is disallowed from transitioning from one non-theta structure to another, as it is deemed superfluous. In contrast, scrambling as IM in Korean is allowed freely because its launching and landing sites are not defined in terms of theta-marking at overt syntax. This is due to Korean having weak, rather than strong, theta features.