Extending the extension condition to discontinuous idioms

Peter Svenonius | CASTL, University of Tromsø

This paper makes a specific proposal regarding the structure of idioms as they are listed in the lexicon, which has important ramifications. Specifically, I suggest that first Merge as well as internal Merge can target subconstituents of structures already built by Merge. This creates structures which I call Banyan trees, in which there is more than one undominated node. I suggest that this model, together with certain assumptions about phases and about the functional sequence of syntactic heads, derive important facts about the structure of idioms.

Keywords: Extension Condition, Banyan trees, constituency, phrase structure, Merge, idioms

Published online: 11 May 2006
https://doi.org/10.1075/livy.5.08sve

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