Extending the Application of Merge to Elements in Phonological Representations

Abstract

Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (2002) claim that the presence/absence of recursion divides the organisation of the language faculty into two parts: FLB and FLN. The origins of properties in FLB are thought to be shared by non-human species, whereas FLN contains the species-specific operation Merge, which applies repeatedly to syntactic objects to generate recursively-structured expressions. However, this paper claims that Merge applies not only to (morpho)syntactic objects but also to phonological primitives that make up the phonological structure of morphemes. Accordingly, phonological categories are engaged not only in the externalization of internally-constructed expressions but also in internal computation.