Comment by _glass

14 days ago

Yes, and the project can be criticised by reducing until there's no value anymore. Well known instances of this process:

- Predicate Fronting in Free Relatives: In sentences like “What John saw was a surprise,” labeling the fronted predicate is not without problems, Merge doesn’t yield a clear head.

- Optional Verb Movement in Persian: Yes-no questions where verbs can optionally move (e.g., “Did you go?” vs. “You went?”) messes up feature-checking’s binary mode.

- Non-Matching Free Relatives with Pied-Piping: Structures like “In whichever city you live, you’ll find culture” mess up standard labeling, needs extra stipulations.

- Some Subjects in Finnish: Nominative vs. non-nominative subjects (e.g., “Minua kylmä” [me-ACC cold]) complicate that Minimalist case assignment.