In linguistics, the minimalist program is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky.Chomsky, Noam. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistic theory. MIT occasional papers in linguistics no. 1. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Distributed by MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
Following Imre Lakatos's distinction, Chomsky presents minimalism as a program, understood as a mode of inquiry that provides a conceptual framework which guides the development of linguistic theory. As such, it is characterized by a broad and diverse range of research directions. For Chomsky, there are two basic minimalist questions—What is language? and Why does it have the properties it has?—but the answers to these two questions can be framed in any theory.Boeckx, Cedric Linguistic Minimalism. Origins, Concepts, Methods and Aims, pp. 84 and 115.
Conceptual framework
Goals and assumptions Minimalism is an approach developed with the goal of understanding the nature of language. It models a speaker's knowledge of language as a computational system with one basic operation, namely Merge. Merge combines expressions taken from the lexicon in a successive fashion to generate representations that characterize I-Language, understood to be the internalized intensional knowledge state as represented in individual speakers. By hypothesis, I-language—also called universal grammar—corresponds to the initial state of the human language faculty in individual human development.
Minimalism is reductive in that it aims to identify which aspects of human language—as well the computational system that underlies it—are conceptually necessary. This is sometimes framed as questions relating to perfect design (Is the design of human language perfect?) and optimal computation (Is the computational system for human language optimal?) According to Chomsky, a human natural language is not optimal when judged based on how it functions, since it often contains ambiguities, garden paths, etc. However, it may be optimal for interaction with the systems that are internal to the mind.
Such questions are informed by a set of background assumptions, some of which date back to the earliest stages of generative grammar:
Language is a form of cognition. There is a language faculty (FL) that interacts with other cognitive systems; this accounts for why humans acquire language. Language is a computational system. The language faculty consists of a computational system (CHL) whose initial state (S0) contains invariant principles and parameters. Language acquisition consists of acquiring a lexicon and fixing the parameter values of the target language. Language generates an infinite set of expressions given as a sound-meaning pair (π, λ). Syntactic computation interfaces with phonology: π corresponds to phonetic form (PF), the interface with the articulatory-perceptual (A-P) performance system, which includes articulatory speech production and acoustic speech perception. Syntactic computation interfaces with semantics: λ corresponds to logical form (LF), the interface with the conceptual-intentional (C-I) performance system, which includes conceptual structure and intentionality. Syntactic computations are fully interpreted at the relevant interface: (π, λ) are interpreted at the PF and LF interfaces as instructions to the A-P and C-I performance systems. Some aspects of language are invariant. In particular, the computational system (i.e. syntax) and LF are invariant. Some aspects of language show variation. In particular, variation reduces to Saussurean arbitrariness, parameters and the mapping to PF. The theory of grammar meets the criterion of conceptual necessity; this is the Strong Minimalist Thesis introduced by Chomsky in (2001). Consequently, language is an optimal association of sound with meaning; the language faculty satisfies only the interface conditions imposed by the A-P and C-I performance systems; PF and LF are the only linguistic levels.
Strong minimalist thesis Minimalism develops the idea that human language ability is optimal in its design and exquisite in its organization, and that its inner workings conform to a very simple computation. On this view, universal grammar instantiates a perfect design in the sense that it contains only what is necessary. Minimalism further develops the notion of economy, which came to the fore in the early 1990s, though still peripheral to transformational grammar. Economy of derivation requires that movements (i.e., transformations) occur only if necessary, and specifically to satisfy feature-checking, whereby an interpretable feature is matched with a corresponding uninterpretable feature. (See discussion of feature-checking below.) Economy of representation requires that grammatical structures exist for a purpose. The structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex than required to satisfy constraints on grammaticality.
Within minimalism, economy—recast in terms of the strong minimalist thesis (SMT)—has acquired increased importance.For a full description of the checking mechanism see Adger, David. 2003. Core Syntax. A Minimalist Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press; and also Carnie, Andrew. 2006. Syntax: A Generative Introduction, 2nd Edition. Blackwell Publishers The 2016 book entitled Why Only Us—co-authored by Noam Chomsky and Robert Berwick—defines the strong minimalist thesis as follows:
Under the strong minimalist thesis, language is a product of inherited traits as developmentally enhanced through intersubjective communication and social exposure to individual languages (amongst other things). This reduces to a minimum the "innate" component (the genetically inherited component) of the language faculty, which has been criticized over many decades and is separate from the developmental psychology component.
Intrinsic to the syntactic model (e.g. the Y/T-model) is the fact that social and other factors play no role in the computation that takes place in narrow syntax; what Chomsky, Hauser and Fitch refer to as faculty of language in the narrow sense (FLN), as distinct from faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB). Thus, narrow syntax only concerns itself with interface requirements, also called legibility conditions. SMT can be restated as follows: syntax, narrowly defined, is a product of the requirements of the interfaces and nothing else. This is what is meant by "Language is an optimal solution to legibility conditions" (Chomsky 2001:96).
Interface requirements force deletion of features that are uninterpretable at a particular interface, a necessary consequence of Full Interpretation. A PF object must only consist of features that are interpretable at the articulatory-perceptual (A-P) interface; likewise a LF object must consist of features that are interpretable at the conceptual-intentional (C-I) interface. The presence of an uninterpretable feature at either interface will cause the derivation to crash.
Narrow syntax proceeds as a set of operations—Merge, Move and Agree—carried out upon a numeration (a selection of features, words etc., from the lexicon) with the sole aim of removing all uninterpretable features before being sent via Spell-Out to the A-P and C-I interfaces. The result of these operations is a hierarchical syntactic structure that captures the relationships between the component features.
Technical innovations The exploration of minimalist questions has led to several radical changes in the technical apparatus of transformational generative grammatical theory. Some of the most important are:For some conceptual and empirical advantages of the MP over the traditional view see: Bošković, Željko. 1994. D-Structure, Θ-Criterion, and Movement into Θ-Positions. Linguistic Analysis 24: 247–286, and for more detailed discussions Bošković, Željko and Howard Lasnik (eds). 2006. Minimalist Syntax: The Essential Readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell. the elimination of the distinction between deep structure and surface structure in favour of a derivational approach the elimination of X-bar theory in favour of bare phrase structure (see below) the elimination of indexation in favour of Move or Agree the elimination of the notion of government in favour of feature-checking the idea that feature-checking—which matches interpretable and uninterpretable features, and subsequently deletes the latter—might be responsible for all structure-building operations, including Merge, Move, and Agree (see below) the idea that syntactic derivations proceed by clearly delineated stages called "phases" (see below) the specification that there are exactly two points where syntax interacts with other components: a "spell-out" point between syntax and the interface with phonetic form (PF), and an additional point of interaction with logical form (LF)
Basic operations Minimalist theorizing proposes several operations for building syntactic structure. Early versions of Minimalism posit two basic operations: Merge and Move. Later versions treat Move as a special case of Merge when it takes as one of its terms an element that is internal to the other (so-called Internal Merge). In regards to how Move should be formulated, there continues to be active debate about this, but the differences between current proposals are relatively minute. More recent versions of Minimalism also recognize Agree as a basic operation, which is related to the mechanism that forces movement and mediates feature-checking.
Operations and the Y-model
Minimalist theorizing assumes a derivational model of syntax. While it inherits and adapts concepts from some of its predecessors (especially Government and Binding Theory and Principles and Parameters), it departs from them in significant ways. Minimalism rejects earlier proposals that syntactic structure is generated through successive levels of representation and instead proposes that it is built piecemeal by recursive, combinatorial operations, culminating in distinct interface levels.
Lexical items are drawn from the lexicon and placed in a numeration. This is the set of lexical items to be used in the derivation. These are assembled by the operations Merge and Move. Recent theorizing proposes that agreement and movement are mediated by the operation Agree. At some point in the derivation (or at several points; see the discussion on Derivation by Phase below), the derivation is spelled out to the interface levels, Logical Form (or LF) and Phonetic Form (or PF), splitting the derivation into two branches. LF and PF feed the cognitive modules responsible for determining meaning and externalizing speech, respectively. This model of the grammar is referred to as the Y-model or T-model because the divergence of the derivation after spell-out resembles an inverted letter Y in diagrams of the model.
Operations on the LF and PF branches are fed by Spell Out. Operations on the LF branch are not "visible" on the PF branch, and vice versa. This means that any movement that occurs on the LF branch will be covert and not be phonologically represented, and operations on the PF branch will not directly affect the meaning of an utterance. By hypothesis, the operations on the LF branch are distinct from those on the PF branch. Proposals about what operations are available on each branch are a matter of debate. For example, Distributed Morphology proposes a wide array of operations on the PF branch that are responsible for deriving morphological structure from syntactic structures.
Merge
In its original formulation, Merge is a function that takes two objects (α and β) and merges them into an unordered set with a label, either α or β. In more recent treatments, the possibility of the derived syntactic object being un-labelled is also considered; this is called "simple Merge" (see Label section).
Merge(α,β)→{α,{α,β}}