Remarks on labelling and determinacy

Abstract

Abstract Work by Chomsky et al. (2019) and Epstein et al. (2018) develops a third-factor principle of computational efficiency called “Determinacy”, which rules out “ambiguous” syntactic rule-applications by requiring one-to-one correspondences between the input or output of a rule and a single term in the domain of that rule. This article first adopts the concept of “Input Determinacy” articulated by Goto and Ishii (2019, 2020), who apply Determinacy specifically to the input of operations like Merge, and then proposes to extend Determinacy to the labeling procedure developed by Chomsky (2013, 2015). In particular, Input Determinacy can explain restrictions on labeling in contexts where multiple potential labels are available (labeling ambiguity), and it can also provide an explanation for Chomsky's (2013, 2015) proposal that syntactic movement of an item (“Internal Merge”) renders that item invisible to the labeling procedure.