The Minimalist Program

Introduction

The Minimalist Program (MP) is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside Generative Grammar since the early nineties, when it was proposed by Chomsky (1993, 1995). In that time, Chomsky presented the MP as a program, not as a theory, but today, the MP lays out a very specific view of the basis of syntactic grammar that, when compared to other formalisms, is often taken to look very much like a theory that represents a dramatic break with earlier generative theories. Unlike all its predecessors that involve the postulation of ever more complex principles, the MP is a move away from excessive complexity as it strives to create a model of language that eliminates unnecessary steps in the representation of the derivation of a sentence (Chomsky 1995). One of leading ideas of the MP is that the language faculty is optimal realization of interface conditions, and thus, the Strongest Minimalist Thesis (SMT) is that language L is an optimal solution to interface conditions imposed on FL by performance systems, and the linguistic expressions generated by L must be legible to these external systems if they are usable (Chomsky 1995, 2004). Such a new insight leads minimalist researchers to a view of Universal Grammar (UG) that is essentially different from the view in its predecessors, from which the MP originated.1^st this difference can be captured in the following Chomsky’s quote (2007: 4):

Throughout the modern history of generative grammar, the problem of determining the character of FL [Faculty of Language] has been approached “from top down”: How much must be attributed to UG to account for language acquisition? The MP seeks to approach the problem “from bottom up”: How little can be attributed to UG while still accounting for the variety of I-languages attained, relying on third factor principles? The two approaches should, of course, converge, and should interact in the course of pursuing a common goal. The aim of current paper is not to discuss the devices and properties attributed to UG in the MP and its predecessors, but to give a clear sketch picture of the key premises of the MP that lead to viewing definitely to the concept of UG by Chomsky and his followers. To this end, the paper is divided into three main sections. Section 2 outlines the most features distinguishing the MP from its predecessors, namely Government and Binding theory (GB), and Principles and Parameters Theory (PPT). The reason is to show that the MP is motivated not only by the search for the explanatory adequacy, but also for a certain level of formal simplicity. Section 3 considers ‘the structure-building computation’ that is viewed as a series of a number of operations which are considered to be the heart and soul of the MP. Section 4 discusses some new ideas articulated recently by Chomsky such as changing the function of movement and the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) feature, or proposing new theories such as Phases and Feature Inheritance in order to determine the least “costly” derivation and reduce the computational complexity.

The Minimalist Program: General Picture

Earlier versions of the Principles and Parameters Theory worked with the hypothesis that the linguistic system has several levels of representation encoding systematic information about linguistic expressions. Some of these levels are conceptually necessary, since their output is the input to performance systems which interact with the linguistic system. The Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory proposed by Chomsky (1993, 1994, 1995) restricts the class of possible linguistic levels of representation to only the ones which are required by conceptual necessity namely, The ones which interface with performance systems under the assumption that, these performance systems are the Articulator-Perceptual System (A-P) and the Conceptual-Intentional System (C-I)

The linguistic levels which interface with A-P and C-I are PF (Phonetic Form) and LF (Logical Form), respectively. From the Minimalist perspective, all principles and parameters of the linguistic system should thus be stated in either LF or PF terms, perhaps as modes of interpretation by the performance systems.

Another assumption of the Program is that the language faculty is comprised of a lexicon and a computational system which is strictly derivational (Chomsky 1994, 1995). The lexicon specifies the items which enter into the computational system and their idiosyncratic properties; the computational system then arranges these items in a way to form a pair which are PF object and LF object. If PF object and LF object are legitimate objects (i.e. they satisfy full interpretation in the sense of Chomsky 1986, 1993), the derivation is said to converge at LF and at PF, respectively. If either PF object or LF object does not satisfy full interpretation, then the derivation is said to crash at the relevant level. A derivation is taken to converge only if it converges at both LF and PF.

The pair of legitimate objects (PF object and LF object) must meet the requirement of compatibility. After all, it is not the case that any linguistic sound can be associated with any linguistic meaning. PF object and LF object should thus be based on the same lexical choices.

In previous versions of the Principles and Parameters Theory, this compatibility requirement was ensured  by D-Structure, which provided the computational system with an array of lexical items structured in a certain way. Under Minimalist assumptions, however, there is no room for a syntactic level such as D-Structure, because it is not an interface level. In order for (PF object and LF object) to be formed according to Minimalist guidelines, it is necessary that the basis for a derivation be an array of lexical items stripped of any substantive property that would make it a syntactic level of representation.

Chomsky (1994, 1995) proposes that such an array is a numeration: a set of pairs of lexical item that comprised of (at most) phonological, semantic and formal features, and i indicate the number of times that lexical item is accessed by the operation Select. Select pulls out a lexical item from a numeration, reduces its index by one, and makes this lexical item available for further operations of the computational system.

Once the compatibility between PF object and LF object is ensured, one needs to deal with the fact that elements interpretable at the phonetic form interface are not interpretable at the logical form interface, and vice versa. At some point in the derivation, the computational system must then split into two parts, one forming phonetic form object and the other forming logical form object which do not interact any further after the bifurcation. S-Structure was the point of this split in pre-Minimalist versions of the Principles and Parameters Theory. The problem from a Minimalist perspective with there being a level feeding PF and LF such as S-Structure is that, since it does not interface with any performance system, it is not conceptually necessary. Thus, every substantive property attributed to S-Structure should be restated within the Minimalist framework in either LF or PF(phonetic form and logical form) terms.

In the case at hand, the only thing required under Minimalist assumptions is a rule which splits the computation to form the distinct objects of phonetic form object and logical form object. Chomsky (1993) calls this operation Spell-Out. Spell-Out is free to apply at any point in a given derivation; "wrong" choices presumably cause the derivation to crash at one of the interface levels. The computation from Spell-Out to PF is referred to as the phonological component, the computation from Spell-Out to LF as the covert component, and the computation that obtains before Spell-Out as the overt syntax. In addition to containing phonological rules proper, the phonological component includes a morphological subcomponent and also deals with linearization.

Finally, it is assumed that the mapping from a numeration of lexical item to the number of times that lexical item is accessed by the operation Select is subject to two conditions (Chomsky 1994):

(i)                 the Uniformity Condition, which states that the operations available in the covert component must be the same as the ones available in overt syntax; and

(ii)               The Inclusiveness Condition, which postulates that l must be built from the features of the lexical items of N.

The Novelty (newness) of the minimalistic programme (MP)

a)      Economy Principles

The minimalistic programme is distinguished from its predecessors by its ‘derivational concept’ which provides principles for how an analysis is constructed, rather than providing filtering conditions that constrain output representations (Chomsky 1991). As the MP seeks to determine the least “costly” derivation and reduce the computational complexity, it should provide principles for how an analysis is constructed, rather than providing filtering conditions that constrain output representations. The main derivational constraints, which are considered to be the cornerstone of the MP, are the so-called ‘Economy. To make this idea clear (Chomsky 1991) describes principles of economy as the practice of “placing a premium on least-effort notions as natural sources of grammatical principles. “The hypothesis itself is based on principles that favor more economical operations, and derivations.

b)     Levels of Representation

 There are two and only two syntactic levels of representation, Logical Form (LF) and Phonological Form (PF). LF is the level of representation that interfaces with the Conceptual Intention system (CI). PF is the interface with the Articulatory-Perceptual system (AP). All conditions on syntactic representations hold at LF and/or PF (Chomsky 1995: 219). This new idea, which is considered to be one of the most significant cornerstones of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program, moves the MP away from the previous syntactic theories of generative grammar. In those theories, a grammar has four distinctive levels:

i.        D-Structure (DS),

ii.      S-Structure (SS),

iii.    Phonetic Form (PF), and

iv.     Logical Form (LF),

 the reason behind proposing that PF and LF are the only available levels of representation  is that,  these two levels are conceptually required and also empirically sufficient, and, as argued by Chomsky, many of empirical reasons that led to adopting DS and SS can be addressed without postulating any levels other than PF and LF.

c)      Full Interpretation

Full Interpretation (FI) requires all features that pass across the interface to receive an interpretation, and representations be minimal in a certain sense (Chomsky 1995). That is, all features and elements have to get an interpretation at, or be deleted before, the interface levels PF and LF (i.e. no superfluous, uninterpretable’ at the interfaces) for derivation to be convergent and optimal, FI must be satisfied by the derivation at both LF and PF by containing no uninterpretable features. Otherwise, the derivation crashes. Accordingly, FI is relativized to the two interface levels

i.        A syntactic expression is PF-interpretable if it can be assigned a phonological representation (i.e., if it can “read” by the phonology).

ii.       A syntactic expression is LF-interpretable if it can be assigned a semantic representation (if it can be read by the semantics). The principle of Full Interpretation is perhaps the most widely used by Economy Principles.

d)     Bare Phrase Structure

 As the MP is a search for simplicity and an attempt to reduce the language specific rules including the principles and parameters, the crucial properties and relations must be stated in the simple and elementary terms of X-bar theory (Chomsky 1995). X-bar theory traditionally asserts each phrase XP has one unique, structurally obligatory element: the head X0 of the phrase. All phrases have a uniform organization in which heads, specifiers, complements, and adjuncts are structurally defined as shown below

                                               x-bar structure

                                               XP

                                   YP                      XP

                                   (adjunct)

                                                      WP                       X

                                               (specifer)         X                     Z

                                                                       (Head)             (Compliment)

By contract, the MP eschews all bar levels and deduces their effects from other principles of the grammar (Chomsky 1995). The specifier relation, then, is defined by the same structural relation to the head as a complement. To illustrate this more, Chomsky (1995) eliminates the X-bar levels in favor of a Bare Phrase-Structure that satisfies Inclusiveness Condition2 which has been formulated by Chomsky as follows:

                  . . . any structure formed by the computation . . . is constituted of elements already present in the lexical items selected for N [the numeration]; no new objects are added in the course of computation apart from rearrangements of lexical properties (in particular, no indices, bar levels in the X-bar theory, and so on . . .) (Chomsky 1995). As for the reason that leads the MP to eliminate X-bar levels, Chomsky (1995) states “ . . . there are no bar levels and no distinction between lexical items and ‘heads’ projected from them. A consequence is that an item can be both an X0 and an NP.” That is, all projections are the lexical items themselves.

MP structure

                                                Xp

                                               

                                                     

Specifier                      Xo

                                                X                     compliment/adjunct

What diagram above implies is that, phrases are composed from a binary relation in which one member serves as both the head and the label for the syntactic constituents. This is due to the fundamental difference between the MP and X-bar theory. The difference is that the MP, as demonstrated earlier, is derivational. That is, it is built from the bottom up, one by one with two main operations, Merge and Move. X-bar theory, on the other hand, is representational in which a structure for a given construction is built in one fell swoop, and then the lexical items are inserted into the structure. An important point should be addressed here is that unlike all its predecessors, this new approach is not at all tolerant of assuming any non-branching phrasal categories. This is not, of course, surprising since binary branching forms the basis for the Merge operation which is central to the MP. If merge is the only tree-building operation, then it is impossible to have a “phrase” consisting of a single member. Binary branching, however, is the single most important principle limiting the complexity of the grammar in mainstream generative linguistics. “A theory that assumes Binary Branching as a guiding principle (e.g., MP) has the advantage of MINIMIZING the class of possible structures while ensuring that the relations between their constituents are unambiguous.

Computational system minimalism

The ‘principles and parameters’ tradition can be regarded as attributing as much as universal grammar (UG)in order to understand possible to how language acquisition is possible, Chomsky characterizes the ‘minimalist program’ as an effort to attribute as little as possible
to Universal Grammar while still accounting for the apparent diversity of human languages. Chomsky shows that his own early contributions to the minimalist program have been fundamental and simple enough to allow easy mathematical and computational study. Among these contributions are the characterization of ‘bare phrase structure,’ and the
definition of a structure building operation merge which applies freely to lexical material, with constraints that ‘filter’ the results only at the Phonological Form and Logical Form interfaces.

-Computational system is the term used for the set of operation required by the process composition or derivation. The operations include, checking, spell-out, merge and interface;

The aspects in computation system are shown below

Checking

Is a procedure which decides whether the lexical element has the appropriate feature before it takes a position in a sentence structure. It is a fundamental relationship which allows one element to license another by checking off the features with which the letter is associated. (Chomsky 1995).The features which need checking include structural Case, phi-feature of T and other agreeing categories, and so on.. The checking is accomplished when a category needing a feature value is in construction with some other elements in the sentence that can supply that feature value. This reflects the fact that one significant role of Move is combining Merge and Agree. It merges Y to XP and Becomes the specifier of XP after the checking features is accomplished by Agree. It also, serves to allow an element to transfer a feature necessary to satisfy some constraint (Weinberg1999).  In order to give this operation more substance, Chomsky (1993) proposes the two following principles:

  Greed: A constituent dies not move unless it has to in order to satisfy some requirement that it has.

Procrastinate: Movement occurs as last as possible in the derivation. An important point of detail to note about the nature of this operation, in early version of the MP, is that movement can be
occurred prior to Spell-Out or in LF (i.e., after Spell-Out). The former type is called ‘overt movement’ and the head of the chain it creates is pronounced. The latter, however, is called ‘covert movement’ and the of the chain it creates is pronounced. Chomsky (1995) argues that overt movement is for satisfaction of morphological properties (formal features) such as moving an entire X (head movement) or XP (phrase movement),whereas covert movement would be expected to be restricted to feature raising such as wh-movement, expletive replacement, and anaphor raising. Both these two types, however, are maintained in the MP. But since the framework is economy-driven, the overt movement is unwelcome because it is costly in terms of economy conditions. However, the covert movement is preferred since it cost-free. Overt and Covert Move More recently, Chomsky (2000 and subsequent works) dismisses with the previous idea that Move is driven by the feature checking (Chomsky 1995). In the more recent Agree-based framework discussed earlier, movement occurs only to satisfy the EPP feature, whereas Case/agreement are licensed in the subject’s base-position. Accordingly, the EPP is the sole reason for movement, since Agree enables other relations to be satisfied without displacing anything. This new insight is further underscored in Chomsky’s discussion of “phases”

Spell out is an operation which distinguishes the phonetic representation within a structural description from other kinds of information. The operation brings about distinction between Phonetic Form (LF) and Logical Form (LF).

Merge, Merge Can be defined as a binary operation that by Select takes per
operational step two constituents “from the numeration [N] and turns them into one constituent that carries the same label as that of the dominating item” (Zeijlstra 2004). This definition simply reflects the fact that Merge needs at least two arguments to form them into a constituent. The reason behind this is that Merge must be recursive (i.e., there can be any number of merge operations) and hence merging two objects is the minimum required to get recursively. Moreover, merging two arguments meets the requirement that all branching must be binary. In technical terms, the operation Merge is defined as

Merge in Minimalist Program is an operation which forms larger units out of those already constructed. For example forming a compound sentence out of simple sentence, or   It is a recursive process which combines two lexical items, or one lexical item and a construction.

Move is an operation that is derived from Merge (Chomsky1995.Move operation is guided by
economy conditions, which involve economy of derivation and representation. It always takes the shortest route. At each step of derivation the principle of economy allows only a minimum of transformational activity. Hence, Chomsky (1993) introduced the Minimal Link Condition (MLC) as an economy condition on the operation Move to preclude the longer movement to occur if there is a shorter legitimate movement. movement: In an early version of the MP, movement is driven by the need for a morphological requirement to be satisfied, and hence, some element, at certain point, is required to move to check some feature in a syntactic structure, and hence movement is crucial in order to “enable a previously uncheck able feature to get checked”

Interface

Interface is the status of the two levels of representation recognized in the approach as logical form (LF) and phonetic form (PF).Their role is to connect linguistic representations to interpretation elsewhere:

Interface levels of representation.  Reducing the levels of presentation into the interface levels of Phonetic Form and Logical Form, however, leads the MP to assume that linguistic
expressions, which are the optimal realizations of the interface conditions, where ‘optimality’ is determined by Economy conditions of Universal Grammar (Chomsky 1993), are generated in the Faculty of Language (FL); the linguistic component of the mind that has interfaces with AP system and LF; CI. This means that form and meaning are represented at these two interfaces.

The four levels of representation recognized in standard government-binding theory were

D-structure, S-structure Logical form (LF) Phonetic form (PF)

These have been reduced into two interface levels in MP to LF and PF

Logical form (LF) is the representation that derives from numeration by applying merge and move.

In MP, numeration is the set of items taken from the lexicon for the purpose of building a structural description. The computational system selects elements from the numeration and combines them into structures.

Phonetic form (PF) is a term used in government-binding theory for the output of the phonological component of a grammar, or the phonological component itself; also called phonological form.

The term is given a revised status in the minimalist programme, where it is  referred to as the articulatory– perceptual interface

Theoretical goals of minimalistic program me

Perfection

The MP appeals to the idea that the language ability in humans shows signs of being incorporated under an optimal design with exquisite organization, which seems to suggest that the inner workings conform to a very simple computational law or a particular mental organ. In other words, the MP works on the assumption that universal grammar constitutes a perfect design in the sense that it contains only what is necessary to meet humans' conceptual and physical (phonological) needs.

From a theoretical standpoint, and in the context of generative grammar, the MP draws on the minimalist approach of the principles and parameters program, considered to be the ultimate standard theoretical model that generative linguistics has developed since the 1980s. What this approach suggests is the existence of a fixed set of principles valid for all languages, in which, when combined with settings for a finite set of binary switches (parameters), may describe the specific properties that characterize the language system a child eventually comes to attain.

The MP aims to get to know how much of the principles and parameters model can be taken as a result of this hypothetical optimal and computationally efficient design of the human language faculty.

Economy

The MP aims at the further development of ideas involving economy of derivation and economy of representation, which had started to become significant in the early 1990s, but were still peripheral aspects of transformational grammar.

v  Economy of derivation is a principle stating that movements (i.e., transformations) only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features. An example of an interpretable feature is the plural inflection on regular English nouns, e.g., lions. The word lions can only be used to refer to several lions, not a single lion, and so this inflection contributes to meaning, making it interpretable. English verbs are inflected according to the number of their subject (e.g., "Lions bite" vs. "A lion bites"), but this information is only interpretable once a relationship is formed between the subject and the verb, so movement of the subject is required.

v  Economy of representation is the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose, i.e., the structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex than required to satisfy constraints on grammaticality, which are equivalent to constraints on the mapping between the conceptual/intentional and sensori-motor interfaces in the optimal system that minimalism seeks to explore.

v  Procrastinate
Procrastinate is a kind of timing principle which states that:“Movement occurs as late as possible in a derivation In the computational system of MP there is a point in which a grammatical representation of the derivation splits, called the spell-out. This point determines what points are necessary before the pronunciation of a sentence and which ones are not. So, the principles that govern the path to Spell-out are different from those that govern the path to LF. The principle called procrastinate comes here into play: this principle prefers derivations that hold off until after spell-out since Economy, Simplicity and Uniformity in Minimalist Syntax covert movements are considered to be more economical than covert movements. Therefore, overt movements must be motivated by morphological forces such as Case, Agreement and WH features: an element moves overtly only if otherwise the derivation of the sentence crashes. Chomsky makes a distinction between weak and strong features: for example WH-features are

Criticisms

In the late 1990s, David E. Johnson and Shalom Lappin published the first detailed critiques of Chomsky's minimalist program. This technical work was followed by a lively debate with proponents of minimalism on the scientific status of the program. The original article provoked several replies and two further rounds of replies and counter-replies in subsequent issues of the same journal.

Lappin et al(2000a) argue that the minimalist program is a radical departure from earlier Chomsky an linguistic practice that is not motivated by any new empirical discoveries, but rather by a general appeal to perfection, which is both empirically unmotivated and so vague as to be unfalsifiable. They compare the adoption of this paradigm by linguistic researchers to other historical paradigm shifts in natural sciences and conclude that of the minimalist program has been an "unscientific revolution", driven primarily by Chomsky's authority in linguistics. The several replies to the article in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Volume 18 number 4 (2000) make a number of different defenses of the minimalist program. Some claim that it is not in fact revolutionary or not in fact widely adopted; while others agree with Lappin and Johnson on these points, but defend the vagueness of its formulation as not problematic in light of its status as a research program rather than a theory.

REFFERENCES

Chomsky.N(1981).Lecture son Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.

Chomsky.N(1982). Some Concepts and Consequents of the Theory of Government and Binding.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press..

Chomsky. N(1986). Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky,N.(1991).Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation. In R. Freidin (ed.), Principles and Parametersin Comparative Syntax 417-457. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky,N. (1993). A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory. In K.Hale & S. Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20: Essaysin Honor of Sylvain Bromberger 1-52. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.

Chomsky,N.(1995).The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.Chomsky,N.2000. Minimalist Inquiries. In R. Martin et al. (eds.), Stepby Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard
Lasnik 89-155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky,N.(2001). Derivation by Phase. In M. Kenstowicz (ed.), KenHale: A Life in Language 53-122. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.

Chomsky,N.(2004). Beyond Explanatory Adequacy. In A. Belletti (ed.),Structures and Beyond 104-131. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Chomsky,N.(2005). On Phases. Ms., Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

Chomsky,N.(2007). Approaching UG from Below. In U. Sauerland &H. Gärtner (eds.),Interfaces+Recursion=Language? Chomsky’sMinimalism and the View from Syntax-Semantics 130. Berlin:Mouton de Gruyter.

Chomsky, N. & H. Lasnik. (1993). The Theory of Principles andParameters. In J. Jacobs et al. (eds.), Syntax: An InternationalHandbook of Contemporary Research 506-569. Berlin: Walterde Gruy

Lappin, Shalom, Robert Levine and David E. Johnson (2000a). "The Structure of Unscientific Revolutions." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18, 665–771

  Lappin, Shalom, Robert Levine and David E. Johnson (2000b). "The Revolution Confused: A Reply to our Critics." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18, 873–890

Lappin, Shalom, Robert Levine and David E. Johnson (2001). "The Revolution Maximally Confused." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19, 901–919

Zeijlstra, H. (2004). Sentential Negation and Negative Concord.Ph.D Dissertation. University ofAmsterdam.

by vack group