Phrasal Spellout and Partial Overwrite: On an alternative to backtracking

Abstract

This paper explores branching vocabulary items as a possible alternative to backtracking in Nanosyntax. Such vocabulary items give rise to the possibility of partial overwrite. Initially, they spell out a node with two phrasal daughters. At a subsequent stage, the right branch is interpreted by a new element, but the original item continues to spell out the left branch of such a derivation. The effects that branching vocabulary items give rise to thus mimic aspects of backtracking, without requiring mechanisms that undo parts of the derivation.