Understanding Minimalism

By: Norbert Hornstein, Jairo Nunes, Kleanthes K. Grohmann

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Hardcover | 15 December 2005

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422 Pages

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Understanding Minimalism, first published in 2005, is an introduction to the Minimalist Program - the model of syntactic theory within generative linguistics. Accessibly written, it presents the basic principles and techniques of the minimalist program, looking firstly at analyses within Government and Binding Theory (the Minimalist Program's predecessor), and gradually introducing minimalist alternatives. Minimalist models of grammar are presented in a step-by-step fashion, and the ways in which they contrast with GB analyses are clearly explained. Spanning a decade of minimalist thinking, this textbook will enable students to develop a feel for the sorts of questions and problems that minimalism invites, and to master the techniques of minimalist analysis. Over 100 exercises are provided, encouraging them to put these skills into practice. Understanding Minimalism will be an invaluable text for intermediate and advanced students of syntactic theory, and will set a solid foundation for further study and research within Chomsky's minimalist framework.

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Published: 24th January 2006

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Preface	p. xi
List of abbreviations	p. xiii
The minimalist project	p. 1
The point of this book	p. 1
Some background	p. 2
Big facts, economy, and some minimalist projects	p. 7
Using GB as a benchmark	p. 13
The basic story line	p. 14
Organization of Understanding Minimalism	p. 16
Some architectural issues in a minimalist setting	p. 19
Introduction	p. 19
Main properties of a GB-style theory	p. 19
General architecture	p. 19
Levels of representation	p. 20
The "T-model"	p. 22
The Projection Principle	p. 23
The transformational component	p. 23
Modules	p. 24
Government	p. 24
Minimalist qualms	p. 24
Rethinking S-Structure	p. 25
Rethinking D-Structure	p. 48
The picture so far	p. 72
Theta domains	p. 76
Introduction	p. 76
External arguments	p. 77
[theta]-marking of external arguments and government	p. 77
The Predicate-Internal Subject Hypothesis (PISH)	p. 80
Some empirical arguments for the PISH	p. 81
Summary	p. 91
Ditransitive verbs	p. 92
The puzzles	p. 92
Verbal shells I	p. 96
Verbal shells II	p. 97
PISH revisited	p. 101
Simple transitive verbs	p. 101
Unaccusative and unergative verbs	p. 105
Conclusion	p. 109
Case domains	p. 111
Introduction	p. 111
Configurations for Case-assignment within GB	p. 113
A unified Spec-head approach to Case Theory	p. 116
Checking accusative Case under the Split-Infl Hypothesis	p. 116
Checking accusative Case under the VP-Shell Hypothesis	p. 122
Checking oblique Case	p. 123
PRO and Case Theory	p. 127
Some empirical consequences	p. 131
Accusative Case-checking and c-command domains	p. 133
Accusative Case-checking and overt object movement	p. 137
Conclusion	p. 140
Movement and minimality effects	p. 141
Introduction	p. 141
Relativized minimality within GB	p. 143
The problem	p. 146
Minimality and equidistance	p. 148
Minimality and equidistance in an Agr-based system	p. 151
Minimality and equidistance in an Agr-less system	p. 161
Relativizing minimality to features	p. 169
Conclusion	p. 172
Phrase structure	p. 174
Introduction	p. 174
X'-Theory and properties of phrase structure	p. 176
Endocentricity	p. 176
Binary branching	p. 179
Singlemotherhood	p. 182
Bar-levels and constituent parts	p. 184
Functional heads and X'-Theory	p. 189
Success and clouds	p. 193
Bare phrase structure	p. 196
Functional determination of bar-levels	p. 196
The operation Merge	p. 200
Revisiting the properties of phrase structure	p. 208
The operation Move and the copy theory	p. 212
Conclusion	p. 217
Linearization	p. 218
Introduction	p. 218
Imposing linear order onto X'-Theory templates	p. 219
The Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA)	p. 223
The LCA and word order variation	p. 235
Traces and the LCA	p. 240
Conclusion	p. 246
Binding Theory	p. 247
Introduction	p. 247
Binding Theory phenomena as potential arguments for DS and SS	p. 248
Warming up	p. 248
Principle A	p. 249
Principle B	p. 252
Principle C	p. 254
Summary	p. 255
The copy theory to the rescue	p. 256
Reconstruction as LF deletion	p. 257
The Preference Principle	p. 264
Indices and inclusiveness (where does Binding Theory apply, after all?)	p. 270
Idiom interpretation and anaphor binding	p. 272
Further issues	p. 276
Conclusion	p. 285
Feature interpretability and feature checking	p. 286
Introduction	p. 286
Some questions concerning checking theory	p. 286
Feature interpretability and Last Resort	p. 290
Features in the computation	p. 290
To be or not to be interpretable, that is the question	p. 293
A case study of expletives	p. 299
Covert movement	p. 302
Some problems	p. 302
Alternative I: Move F	p. 304
Alternative II: Agree	p. 317
Conclusion	p. 328
Derivational economy	p. 330
Introduction	p. 330
Economy computations: preliminary remarks	p. 331
Derivational economy and local computations	p. 333
Existential constructions: the problem	p. 333
Preference for Merge over Move	p. 335
[theta]-relations and economy computations	p. 341
The derivation by phase	p. 345
More on economy and computational complexity	p. 345
Phases	p. 346
Subarrays	p. 352
Working on the edge	p. 358
Economy of lexical resources	p. 363
Conclusion	p. 365
Glossary of minimalist definitions	p. 366
References	p. 369
Language index	p. 392
Name index	p. 393
Subject index	p. 397
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Understanding Minimalism

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