Rebracketing (Gliederungsverschiebung) and the Early Merge Principle

Abstract The concept of Gliederungsverschiebung (rebracketing) was introduced by the Neogrammarians and it is probably the first explanation of syntactic change proper. Originally, it was conceived of to explain the emergence of the complementizer dass “that”, which was held to go back to a demonstrative pronoun that refers cataphorically to a following main clause and which was eventually reanalyzed as introducing the second clause. This paper presents several examples of rebracketing (mainly from various stages of German) and argues that rebracketing is only possible if the clause whose boundary is shifted is embedded under and selected by a lexical head that is eventually reanalyzed as a complementizer. This condition on rebracketing follows from the fact that otherwise, the respective clause would be a phase and no longer accessible for operations from outside (thus excluding rebracketing). Additionally, the paper argues that rebracketing is economy-driven in that it minimizes the structure and it is motivated by the Principle of Early Merge that applies whenever no further movement follows.