Introduction

Abstract

This chapter describes the aim of this book, outlining the main proposal and consequences of it. The main purpose of this book is to propose a new mechanism of movement theory under the Minimalist Program, called a Search and Float approach for Internal Merge. Given the characterization of Move as a special case of Merge, named internal Merge, it is proposed that it requires two prerequisite operations: one is to “dig” into a structure to find a target of Merge, called Search, and the other is to make this target reach the top of the structure, called Float. It is argued that these two operations are constrained in such a way that Search must be minimal and Float obeys Minimize chain links, which requires that this operation cannot skip possible landing sites. It is demonstrated that this mechanism deals with a variety of phenomena that involve Quantifier Raising, such as rigidity effects of scope interaction, the availability of cumulative readings of plural relation sentences and pair-list readings of multiple wh-questions, and the locality effects of topicalization, focus movement, and ellipsis with contrastive focus.