MERGE, Labeling and Transfer Meet the Subject Condition

Abstract

Since the introduction of MERGE, a structure-building operation on a workspace by Chomsky et al. (2019), relatively few studies have been done regarding the Subject Condition. The present study delves into subject phrases in different structural contexts, focusing on sub-extraction from them. Witnessing the variation in terms of judgements, we conducted the acceptability judgement task on different kinds of subject phrases. Accommodating the results of the acceptability judgement task, we propose that subject phrases in general undergo pre-MERGE Transfer prior to their external MERGE. Being sent to the interfaces before they are introduced to the derivation, this implies that they subsequently become opaque to sub-extraction. On the other hand, when extraction is permitted (at least in some cases), such an early Transfer of certain types of subject phrases is delayed, being accessible for further operation. Thus, they naturally enter the derivation at hand and receive V-feature from the matrix verb to achieve the relevant labeling; extraction out of them is then allowed as it can be fed by proper labeling. All in all, this paper deduces the Subject Condition within the framework of MERGE, by resorting to pre-MERGE Transfer without drawing an additional stipulation.