36.3569, Books: Mereological Syntax: Adger (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3569. Fri Nov 21 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3569, Books: Mereological Syntax: Adger (2025)

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Date: 18-Nov-2025
From: Rachel Aldrich [raldrich at mit.edu]
Subject: Mereological Syntax: Adger (2025)


Title: Mereological Syntax
Subtitle: Phrase Structure, Cyclicity, and Islands
Series Title: Linguistic Inquiry Monographs
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: MIT Press
           http://mitpress.mit.edu/
Book URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553278/mereological-syntax/

Author(s): David Adger

Abstract:

An argument for replacing Chomsky’s set-theoretic Merge view of syntax
with a theory of syntax based on mereological objects.
Mereology is the study of parthood—what it means for one thing to be
part of another. David Adger argues that a theory of syntax based on
mereological objects should replace Chomsky’s set-theoretic Merge view
of syntax. He shows how this new perspective solves some of the
problems that have bedeviled minimalism, while opening a path to a
unified approach to islands, one of the central topics in theoretical
syntax for the past 50 years. Adger draws on data from across many
languages and from experimental work.
Adger focuses on two puzzles—specifically, the so-called Labeling
Problem and the Copy Question—that arise from the Merge model of
syntax. He adapts ideas from mereology to build a system of phrase
structure, using an operation he calls Subjoin, that solves these
puzzles. He defines a simple constraint on mereological objects that
he calls Angular Locality, which has wide-ranging ramifications for
what constitutes a possible structure, derives successive cyclicity as
a theorem, and opens a new approach to explaining why certain island
phenomena behave as they do.

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Syntax




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