the syntax and semantics of relativization and quantification

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outside of the definiteness head of the noun phrase at LF.
1.2 Theoretical framework and assumptions
In this section I briefly outline the main theoretical tools that I adopt in this dissertation,
and the assumptions that I will make about phrase structure in Quechua.
The basic syntactic model will be a Minimalist framework as in [Chomsky 1995,
2000, 2001a]. Thus I assume that the fundamental syntactic operation by which
two lexical items or syntactic constituents may be combined is Merge. External
Merge is the derivational step by which two independent syntactic units α and β
are combined to form the set {γ, {α, β}}, where γ is the label of α. Internal Merge
is a similar operation with the additional proviso that β is a constituent of the structure
α. I will often refer to Internal Merge informally as “movement” of β. I will
also frequently use a notation in which the point from which Internal Merge takes
place is indicated with a trace (t) in the syntactic tree. When it becomes relevant in
the text I will discuss the Spell-Out of the syntactic structure and the importance
of the Copy Theory of movement, by which the lower “trace” position is filled by
one copy of the Internally Merged element.
In this framework, Internal Merge is triggered by a combination of an Agree
relationship between the head H of α, and β, and an EPP (OCC) feature on H.
Agreement can occur when H contains uninterpretable features which are identical
to interpretable features of β. In this case, H is called a probe, and β is the goal. In
order for the Agree relationship to be established, β must be the nearest matching