Abstract
This paper develops Chomsky's proposal that the theoretical status of D-structure should be nullified in favor of alternation between Merger and Chain Formation up to the point of SPELL-OUT. We argue that, under Economy considerations, Merger has priority over Chain Formation in building A′-dependencies. A cross-linguistic correlation between wh-questions and quantification is further established to show that operator-variable dependencies should be parametrized relative to operator height, namely, operators merging into CP/IP in Chinese, into PP/DP in Japanese, and into D 0 /N 0 in English. It is further argued that only nouns may enter into unselective binding since they are the sole providers of non-pronominal variables. Adverbs, in contrast, are intrinsic operators and must move to create variables (i.e., traces left behind by movement). Together with the working hypothesis that operator features are not universally strong, the noun-adverb distinction provides a straightforward account of LF argument-adjunct asymmetries, reinventing the insights of Huang (1982) and Lasnik and Saito (1984, 1992) in a minimalist fashion. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.