Introduction

In this chapter, I take a step back and review the reasons behind the claim that syntactic structures, operations and relationships are fundamentally asymmetric. This claim has been articulated in various ways by various researchers: as the Antisymmetry Theory of Kayne (1994), the Dynamic Antisymmetry Theory of Moro (2000) or the Asymmetry Theory of Di Sciullo (2005). I focus on the asymmetric properties of Merge, Move and Labeling, as these are the mechanisms I take on in the chapters that follow. I proceed as follows. In Sections 2.2–2.4, I review Kayne's (1994) Antisymmetry Theory, Moro's (2000) Dynamic Antisymmetry Theory and Di Sciullo's (2005) Asymmetry Theory (which all take asymmetric structures and mechanisms to be the norm). In Sections 2.5–2.6, I discuss two constructions that were analyzed as symmetric in the early days of generative grammar and have since been reanalyzed as asymmetric. The two are coordinate structures and double object constructions. In Section 2.7, I turn to the asymmetric properties of Move, focusing on locality considerations. And finally, in Section 2.8, I discuss the asymmetry of existing labeling algorithms.

Antisymmetry Theory

Kayne's (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom, stated formally in (1a) and more informally in (1b), only allows structures with asymmetric c-command relationships between non-terminal nodes. As a consequence, it derives precedence from asymmetric c-command; if one node asymmetrically c-commands another node in a tree, the terminal nodes dominated by the first node will precede the terminal nodes dominated by the second one.