Syntax as Conservation Under Constraint

We derive the four structural properties of sub-limit dynamics , finite vocabulary, early saturation, interaction bottleneck, and efficiency paradox , from the syntactic domain, without presupposing the axiomatic framework in which they were originally established. Starting from the observation that syntax exhibits persistent structure under transformation, we identify the minimal conditions under which such persistence is possible. These are the three axioms of constrained generative systems, arrived at independently from syntactic phenomena. We show that the consumption type is trajectory-consumptive (T3) and the dynamical regime is R2 (branched attractor). We identify the syntactic pixel , the minimal local event in which an element changes configuration while preserving a distinguishable structural relation under a finite constraint L (grammaticality). L decomposes into three jointly necessary components: persistence (L1), readability (L2), and recursive closure (L3). From this structure alone, we derive three phenomena that remain unexplained within current syntactic theory: the gradient nature of grammaticality judgments (proximity to the boundary of L), the unidirectionality of grammaticalization (irreversible consumption under A2), and the spontaneous reconstruction of syntactic structure in creolization (restoration of L via the Bridge mechanism). The central result: Merge generates the volume of syntactic space; the pixel defines its boundary. Grammaticality is not a rule system but a boundary condition on structural distinguishability.