Non-determinism and the Derivational Null Hypothesis

This paper supports non-determinism by motivating the derivational null hypothesis in the sense that the syntactic derivational operation may be analyzed as free and costless, i.e., null hypothesis, given the usual proper semantic interpretive system. In this paper the syntactic derivational operation in terms of what is called Merge as claimed in Chomsky (2008) is mainly discussed. Specifically, it argues against Chomsky's (2008) deterministic theory of Merge, i.e., the theory of edge feature (EF). In short, it proposes the non-deterministic Merge theory against Chomsky's (2008) deterministic Merge theory. Hence, it claims that minimalism is better motivated in terms of the non-deterministic Merge theory. The null hypothesis indicates a situation where certain properties of the grammatical system "come for free" - that is, do not require any stipulation, given the basis parameters for what the grammar is supposed to do. Hence, the motivation of non-determinism in terms of the derivational null hypothesis will contribute to the higher level of the explanatory adequacy of minimalism. The notion of null hypothesis may be applicable to other syntactic operations in the sense of Affect-α (Lasnik and Saito 1992), which would further support non-determinism.