On the nature of FormSet

Sandiway Fong, Masayuki Oishi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

FormSet, proposed by Chomsky (2021), is one of two primitive set formation operations on Workspace items in the theory of I-Language, the other primitive is Merge. In this paper, we investigate the particular properties of FormSet, distinct from Merge, across phenomena in the noun phrase and verb phrase domains. In particular, Workspace items input to FormSet must be a coherent collection of items that obey natural conditions on parallelism. We define what parallelism means, both in terms of pre-conditions for FormSet, and as conditions on subsequent operations such as Merge applying to a set built by FormSet. In doing so, we obtain new, yet simple analyses for classic data in accordance with the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT).

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalLinguistic Variation
DOIs
StateAccepted/In press - 2025

Keywords

  • FormSet
  • I-language
  • Merge
  • strong minimalist thesis
  • syntax

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language

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