A Companion to Chomsky. Группа авторов
More specifically, the role of Agree is to ensure that syntactic features are checked or licensed. This is important in order to achieve descriptive adequacy, notably when it comes to constraining the grammar, since we know that dependency‐formation is heavily constrained across languages. A simple example of dependency‐formation when it comes to features can be seen in English subject–verb agreement as in (23).
1 (23)They are happy.She is happy.I am happy.
Subject–verb agreement is the morphological expression of an abstract syntactic relationship between the verb and the subject, since, as (23) illustrates, they have to agree in the features [NUMBER] (singular and plural) and [PERSON] (1, 2, 3). Agree is the mechanism that ensures that, say, the features of they match the features on the verb (see Adger 2003 for a textbook illustration). Notably, it is assumed that pronouns (and other nominals) carry number and person features that are interpreted at the C‐I interface, whereas similar features on verbs are not interpreted by the C‐I interface. For that reason, such features are uninterpretable, even though they can be morphologically realized, as in the case of English subject–verb agreement.
As structures are generated, they are at various points transferred to the two interfaces: the sensorimotor interface (“sound”) and conceptual‐intentional interface (“meaning”). That is, pieces of syntactic structure (called “phases” within minimalism) are transferred to the interfaces and there given the necessary interpretation at both interfaces. Space does not allow us to elaborate on phases, but see Gallego (2012) for an extensive presentation.
The Minimalist Program is a program, meaning that it comes in different guises. As Chomsky (2000, 92) puts it: “[t]here are minimalist questions, but no minimalist answers, apart from those found in pursuing the program, perhaps that makes no sense, or that it makes sense but is premature.” Chomsky has never provided a more theoretical foundation of the notion of a program, but Boeckx (2006) does so by pointing to work by Lakatos (1968, 1970) and others. Lakatos argues that research programs have a core, a set of principles that the scholar has to adhere to. In addition, auxiliary assumptions are made, which often vary from one timeslice of the theory to another. The latter are often oversimplifications that the researcher knows are not true, but yet are made in order to be able to provide sufficiently detailed analyses of a set of phenomena. Because of this, Lakatos argues that the rigor of a research program may not at first be great, and that maturation is often slow. Relevantly for some of the criticism leveled against generative work, namely that there are so many counterexamples to proposed principles or generalizations, Lakatos has a specific view on the role of falsification: “A corroborated falsifying hypothesis does not have sufficient power to enable a counterexample to eliminate a theory. If it had, we would eliminate all science instantly” (Lakatos 1968, 163). And he continues:
A counterexample, in order to reject, to eliminate a theory, needs more powerful support than that which a lower‐level falsifying hypothesis can provide: it needs the support of a theory with more corroborated content, with wide explanatory power. There must be no elimination without the acceptance of a better theory (Lakatos 1968, 163; his italics).
In this regard, Lakatos differs from Popper: “[…] in my conception criticism does not – and must not – kill as fast as Popper imagined. Purely negative, destructive criticism, like “refutation” or demonstration of an inconsistency does not eliminate a programme” (Lakatos 1968, 183; his italics). This conception fits very well with how research within the Minimalist Program has taken place: It has been exploratory and continued despite obvious empirical or theoretical issues that needed to be fixed.
Boeckx (2006) and others argue that this programmatic nature of the Minimalist Program is a good thing. It allows researchers to pursue a multitude of approaches within the larger umbrella of minimalism. Put differently, it is possible to assume lexicalism (e.g. Chomsky 1995: chapter 4, Williams 2007), distributed morphology (Embick and Noyer 2007, Embick 2015), cartography (Rizzi 1997, Shlonsky 2010), or an exo‐skeletal approach (Borer 2005a, b, 2013, Lohndal to appear). Within each version, a substantial body of work has emerged and the versions are developing fairly independently of each other. At the same time, it makes it hard to pin down exact criteria that can be used to label a particular scholar a minimalist. It also differs to what extent a particular scholar considers his or her work minimalist in nature, in particular in the ontological sense identified by Martin and Uriagereka (2000). However, it should be pointed out that some argue that minimalism should start producing what they label “theories,” here summarized by Lohndal and Uriagereka (2014, 520):
Some scholars have argued that it is time to produce theories that can be evaluated and falsified (see, e.g. Hornstein 2009). Soon after the [minimalist program] was initiated, Lasnik (1999: p. 6) stated that “there is not yet anything close to a Minimalist theory of language.” Differences in the underlying philosophy of science will in part determine whether a scholar regards programs as sufficient or whether theories are required for genuine progress (Lohndal and Uriagereka 2014, p. 520).
This raises obvious and thorny questions about what the difference between a program and a theory may be, issues that we cannot go into here.
That concludes our fairly brief overview of the general nature of the Minimalist Program. In the next section, we continue our discussion of this program by turning to some current tendencies.
3.6 Current Tendencies
In this section, we will try to outline some of the current research trends within the Minimalist Program. A range of issues are just as important today as they have always been: Poverty of the Stimulus (see Crain, Giblin, and Thornton, Chapter 29 of this volume), structure dependent rules, UG, constraints on dependencies (see Müller, Chapter 12 of this volume). Nevertheless, there are certain areas to which the searchlight is currently oriented. Some of these are discussed in other chapters, notably language evolution (Reboul, Chapter 30 of this volume) and an increased emphasis on comparative grammar (Sheehan, Chapter 11 of this volume). For that reason, we won't discuss these here. Rather, we will focus on three other topics: Features, the nature of phrase‐structure representations (viz. labels and labeling), and extensions of the formal framework to new areas.
3.6.1 Features and the Hierarchy of Features
It has been pointed out in recent literature that there is a tension between minimalism and the cartographic approach put forth by Rizzi (1997) and Cinque (1999). While minimalism argues for a minimal role of UG, the cartographic model assumes a very rich system of features, organized in one rich functional hierarchy. An oft‐cited example is the following, which is Cinque's (1999, p. 106) proposal for a universal sequence of functional heads that host adverbials in their specifiers. The lexical items here are intended as examples of each category, and there is an Italian example (tutto) because there is no English example of this category.
1 (24) [frankly Moodspeech act [ luckily Moodevaluative [allegedly Moodevidential[probably Modepistemic [once T(Past) [then T(Future) [perhaps Moodirrealis [necessarily Modnecessity [possibly Modpossibility [usually Asphabitual [again Asprepetitive(I) [often Aspfrequentative(I) [intentionally Modvolitional [quickly Aspcelerative(I) [already T(Anterior) [no longer Aspterminative [still Aspcontinuative [always Aspperfect(?) [just Aspretrospective [soon Aspproximative [briefly Aspdurative [characteristically(?) Aspgeneric/progressive [almost Aspprospective [completely AspSgCompletive(I) [tutto AspPlCompletive [well Voice [fast/early Aspcelerative(II) [again Asprepetetive(II) [often Aspfrequentiative(II) [ completely AspSgCompletive(II) ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
In opposition to this view, typically minimalist syntacticians assume a rather poor functional architecture, e.g.