Dependency Structures Derived from Minimalist Grammars

This paper provides an interpretation of Minimalist Grammars (Stabler, 1997; Stabler & Keenan, 2003) in terms of dependency structures. Under this interpretation, merge operations derive projective dependency structures, and movement operations create both non-projective and illnested structures. This provides a new characterization of the generative capacity of Minimalist Grammar, and makes it possible to discuss the linguistic relevance of non-projectivity and illnestedness based on grammars that derive structures with these properties.