Relations in minimalism

In this paper, after reviewing two distinct approaches to syntactic relations, Epstein et al.'s (1998) derivational approach and Chomsky's (2000) compositional approach, I show that, given Epstein, Kitahara, and Seely's (2010) analysis of structure-building (based on Merge (X, Y) => {X, Y}), the main empirical difference between these two approaches disappears. I then discuss Chomsky's (2007, 2008) suggestion that c-command is eliminable in favor of probe-goal and minimal search conditions. If probe-goal and minimal search conditions are sufficient to characterize not only the empirically desirable aspects of c-command, but also other syntactically significant relations, then any further characterization of such relations appears to be superfluous.