A MERGE-Based Derivation of Tagalog/Filipino Basic Sentence Structure: A Preliminary Sketch
Philip Jade Gazil
May 2025 

The Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT) is understood as a requirement that the structures of I-language are generated by the simplest operations, and that the faculty of language is an optimal solution to certain language-specific conditions (LSCs) (Chomsky et al., 2023). Using SMT as a guiding principle, Chomsky and others proposed a new formulation of MERGE that applies on the workspace (WS)—a set consisting of inscriptions of lexical items available for computation at a given derivational stage—instead of directly manipulating syntactic objects This formulation of MERGE is constrained by general principles that govern the operation of a computational mechanism known as third factor constraints. Following MERGE and SMT, the present study offers a preliminary analysis of Tagalog/Filipino sentences, particularly the transitive and intransitive constructions, wh-question formation, and equative sentences.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/009053 (please use that when you cite this article)
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keywords:	strong minimalist thesis, merge, third factor constraints, tagalog, equative sentences, syntax
previous versions:	v1 [May 2025]
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