A Companion to Chomsky. Группа авторов
relations), a pair (π, λ) satisfying these conditions and generated in the most economical way. Any additional structure or assumptions require empirical justification (Chomsky 1993, p. 4).
And since this paper, D‐structure and S‐structure have no longer been part of the grammatical component. Rather, the interfaces, sound and meaning, are regarded as the essential components, as Chomsky (2000, p. 91) argues:
On these assumptions we understand L[anguage] to be a device that generates expressions Exp = <Phon, Sem>, where Phon provides the “instructions” for sensorimotor systems and Sem the “instructions” for systems of thought – information about sound and meaning, respectively, where “sound” and “meaning” are understood in internalist terms, “externalizable” for language use by the performance systems.
The emphasis on interfaces raises many new questions: What is the division of labor between the core syntax and the interfaces? How are the interfaces actually structured (see Uriagereka 2008, Samuels 2012, Lohndal 2014, among several, on the latter)?
Many other examples of minimalist reasoning could be provided as well. An excellent textbook exposition can be found in Hornstein, Nunes, and Grohmann (2005), and we refer the reader to this for more in depth discussion and a rich array of examples.
The minimalist reasoning is in part an application of Occam's Razor, what Martin and Uriagereka (2000) have labeled “methodological minimalism”:
What one might call a “weak minimalist thesis” is nothing new. The drive for simple and nonredundant theories of the world (or Occam's razor) is taken for granted in the core sciences. Even within the more specialized science of linguistics, this working methodology has brought undeniable success. From such a perspective, minimalism is just a new way to refer to what many people have been doing for a long time: seeking the best way to theorize about a particular domain of inquiry. We think of this thesis as methodological minimalism. (Martin and Uriagereka 2000, p. 1)
However, minimalism can also be viewed in a different sense, what Martin and Uriagereka (2000) label “ontological minimalism.” As Chomsky (2000, 92) points out, progress has made it “possible to consider some new questions about [the] F[aculty of]L[anguage]. In particular, we may ask the question, how well is FL designed?” The idea is that language design may be optimal, “approaching a “perfect solution” to minimal design specifications” (Chomsky 2000, 93). The latter is known as the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT). Chomsky is the first to stress that it would be surprising if the conclusion holds true, yet it would carry significant implications if true. As such, the reduction and unification that characterize minimalism are also motivated by the SMT. It is not just a question of reducing or dispensing with grammar‐internal levels, but with that comes the gain that the architecture only encompasses the virtually conceptually necessary interfaces, those that a theory of I‐language cannot do without. This is all motivated by the quest to understand why certain principles of the language faculty hold and not others (Chomsky 2000, p. 92; Chomsky 2004). This type of why‐question is characteristic of the Minimalist Program, and Chomsky (2000) emphasizes that they are extraordinarily difficult to answer:
Questions of this kind are not often studied and might not be appropriate at the current level of understanding, which is, after all, still quite thin in a young and rapidly changing approach to the study of a central component of the human brain, perhaps the most complex object in the world, and not well understood beyond its most elementary properties (Chomsky 2000, p. 93).
As a consequence of this quest, other properties of the mind/brain have become more prominent (cf. Boeckx and Uriagereka 2006, p. 542). Chomsky (2005) emphasizes that there are in principle three factors that, in some combination, determine the adult language system: “Assuming that the faculty of language has the general properties of other biological systems, we should, therefore, be seeking three factors that enter into growth of language in the individual” (Chomsky 2005, p. 6). These three factors are provided in (20).
1 (20)Genetic endowment specific to languageExperiencePrinciples not specific to the faculty of language
The first part is what is often referred to as Universal Grammar (UG): it is whatever the genetic endowment is for acquisition of human language to take place. Furthermore, it is obvious that experience plays a role, given that a child growing up in Beijing acquires Mandarin Chinese and a child growing up in Athens acquires Greek. The last factor encompasses principles that are not specific to Universal Grammar. Chomsky argues that principles of data analysis may be among such principles, and also:
[…] principles of structural architecture and developmental constraints that enter into canalization, organic form, and action over a wide range, including principles of efficient computation, which would be expected to be of particular significance for computational systems such as language (Chomsky 2005, p. 6).
As Lohndal and Uriagereka (2017, p. 117) point out, these factors are very similar to the three factors that hold for organisms more generally (cf. Gould 2002, p. 259 on the “adaptive triangle”). That said, it is not trivial to develop specific proposals for what the third factors actually are; see Lohndal and Uriagereka (2017) for comprehensive discussion. However, this focus on third factors has also led to a reduced emphasis on the role of Universal Grammar, hence, for example, Chomsky (2007) has the title “approaching UG from below.” This is a marked shift compared to GB, where concerns about the size of Universal Grammar were nonexistent. If a property is innate, it does not have to be somehow learned from the environment, so a big UG is compatible with taking arguments from the poverty of the stimulus seriously (see Crain, Giblin and Thornton, Chapter 29 of this volume). In recent minimalism, the goal is to reach explanatory adequacy while attributing as little as possible to UG. Another reason for this shift is the concern for biological and evolutionary adequacy, which characterizes minimalism. It is hard to see how all the separate parts (and their interrelationships) of the GB system could or would have evolved. How did the uniquely human ability for language arise in the species? The evolutionary literature is by now very rich and multiple proposals have been advanced (for reviews, see Fitch 2010; Reboul, Chapter 30 of this volume). Even though minimalism does not offer a single answer to the question, the question itself has shaped a lot of research within minimalism, e.g. the increased emphasis on third factor effects.
The architecture of the grammar in minimalism is illustrated in (21).
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Let us consider this computational system in a bit more detail.
There is a lexicon, just as in GB and previous approaches. Based on whatever is in the lexicon, there is one basic mechanism that creates structure: Merge puts two items together, say, α and β, and that generates the set {α, β}, which typically then has α or β as its label: {α, {α, β} or {β, {α, β}}(Chomsky 1995). This, then, is the way to implement labeling in terms of (unordered) sets. More traditional tree structure representations are provided in (22).
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Further items can be added and merged with α or β to generate binary‐branching structures. This accounts for the creative linguistic ability that all humans possess. Merge comes in two different “flavors”: external merge, which is the first time an item is merged into a structure, and internal merge, which means that, say, α is merged again later in the structure (hence accounting for displacement phenomena) (Chomsky 2004; see Svenonius, Chapter 9 of this volume, for extensive discussion). Importantly, both ways of applying merge are manifestations of the same operation. The Extension Condition is a principle that holds that all trees are extended at the top, meaning that new lexical items from the lexicon have to be merged on top of the existing structure, they cannot be “tucked into” existing structure (Chomsky 1995).
In addition to merge, there is at least the