A Theoretical and Empirical Study on the Unified and Relativized Notion of Phase in Generative Grammar

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This study deals with the notion of phase, which is one of the important theoretical notions in the minimalist program, the most recent model of generative grammar. The notion of phase is a unit based on which the computation proceeds in a cyclic fashion, and syntactic information is sent to PF and LF through PF-Transfer and LF-Transfer. The notion of phase was first proposed by Chomsky (2000) and further developed by, among others, Chomsky (2001, 2004, 2005, 2006). Chomsky claims that CP and vP count as phases, and that PF-Transfer and LF-Transfer apply simultaneously at these phase levels. Since PF-Transfer and LF-Transfer are independent operations, however, there is no a priori reason to assume that they apply simultaneously. This study proposes that PF-Transfer and LF-Transfer applies non-simultaneously, arguing that our analysis explains various linguistic phenomena in a principled way.