Precede-and-command revisited revisited

description Jan-Wouter Zwart. 2015. Precede-and-command revisited revisited. Language 91.3, e169-e178.
type International peer-reviewed reply article.
ID 2015c | 154 | DOI | First version November 13, 2014; final version July 13, 2015.
origin Reply to an article in Language 90 by Benjamin Bruening, which I felt undermined the idea of dependency as a function or merge.
keywords binding, discourse, dependency, linear precedence, locality
summary Basing his argumentation on an analysis of condition C effects, Bruening (2014) proposes to replace the familiar notion of c-command underlying dependency relations with a precede-and-command condition, which defines dependency relations as precedence relations within a local domain (phase). In this reply I argue that condition C effects cannot be used to show the relevance of phases for the definition of syntactic dependency, and I question the conceptual necessity of the notion phase as currently defined.
related full text, original article, Bruening rejoinder

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