Some Notes on External Remerge

Abstract

To constrain external remerge (or multi-dominance) including the so-called quirky cases of remerge, de Vries (2009: 357) proposes a condition called Root Condition (RC), which states that if α and β are selected as input for merge, then α or β (or both) must be a root. He also formalizes RC as No Proliferation of Roots Condition (NPRC), which commands merge not to increase the number of roots. This paper, however, disproves the formalization of RC as NPRC due to some disparity between the two and then shows that neither RC nor NPRC properly excludes quirky remerge cases without stipulating an unmotivated order restriction on merge. Instead the current work suggests a process-based explanation under some plausible assumptions on the economy measure of merge and on process load variations depending on the work space arrangement at a relevant point of derivation.