This course explores the question to what extent the existence and
nature of all (prosodic, morphological, syntactic, semantic)
dependencies can be understood as a function of Merge, starting from
the hypothesis that dependencies, in spite of appearance to the
contrary, exist only between sisters.

Session 1: This session discusses the nature of Merge: is it
symmetric, yielding sets, or asymmetric, yielding ordered pairs? We
argue for the latter, and hypothesize that as soon as two elements
are merged together, an asymmetry is created between the two members
of the resulting pair. In view of this, we consider the question:
what is the simplest, most minimal conception of Merge? What is the
nature of percolation, and do we need labels to express properties
of structures resulting from (a sequence of operations) Merge?

Session 2: This session discusses phrasal and clausal prosody as a
function of Merge, reconsidering the Nuclear Stress Rule in
derivational terms (revisiting Bresnan 1971). In connection with
this, we consider the stress pattern of names, compounds, phrases,
and clauses in Dutch and other languages, arguing that we need to
distinguish a phonological and a syntactic accentuation mechanism,
the latter to be understood as a direct effect of asymmetric Merge.
We also consider the question of how to derive broad and narrow
focus.

Session 3: This session considers effects of Merge on
morphosyntactic dependencies, focusing on Case, agreement, tense,
mood, aspect, negation, and the adverbial notions studied in Cinque
(1999). We develop a dependency format which involves (a) the
asymmetric syntactic relation between two sisters, and (b) a spell-
out mechanism for the expression of the dependency on one of the
terms of the dependent sister.

Session 4: This session reconsiders the relevance of functional
heads for the dependencies discussed in section 3, concluding that
it is extremely limited. This suggests that we pursue an
architecture of the clause without familiar functional heads such as
tense and agreement, negation, and the various adverbial notions
discussed by Cinque (1999). This gives rise to a more flexible
notion of syntactic structure, where structure is built up from the
bottom up using only contentful material. This leads us to
reconsider triggers for movement, ultimately aiming at an approach
that makes no use of the concept of feature checking/elimination.

Session 5: This session resumes many of the issues from the four
preceding sessions, with a view to establishing some understanding
of the nature of syntactic variation. We address various issues: the
linearization of pairs created by Merge, the morphological marking
of dependents and nondependents (casting a different light on the
typological distinction between head and dependent marking),
variation in movement patterns (is there a head parameter?), and the
(phonological?) nature of head movement.