Exploring Merge: A new form of sideward movement

Abstract This paper explores Merge and proposes a new form of sideward movement (double sideward movement) carried out by a new application of External Merge. Double sideward movement occurs in the following way: given a syntactic object S containing XP and YP, Merge applies to XP and YP, and creates {XP, YP} outside S, thus causing XP and YP to undergo sideward movement at the same time. It is argued that multiple clefts (cleft sentences with multiple phrases in the focus position) in Japanese are derived by double sideward movement of the multiple focus phrases and that this derivation is responsible for certain surprising properties of Japanese multiple clefts, some well known and others newly discovered, including the lack of island effects and the presence and absence of clausemate effects. Other consequences are discussed for the nature of operator movement and scrambling as well as for restrictions on the application of Merge.