Product Description

This text consists of four recent essays that attempt to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences. In these essays the minimalist approach to linguistic theory is formulated and progressively developed. Building on the theory of principles and parameters and in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages is also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #463961 in Books
• Published on: 1995-11-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 420 pages

Customer Reviews

The masterpiece of contemporary syntax
This is Chomsky's latest book on syntax (he has published a number of papers in syntax and a number of books in politics and on the philosophy of language since). It marks the beginning of a new trend in contemporary syntactic theory: Minimalism. Following the tradition of syntactic research of the eighties, the so-called 'Principles and Parameters' theory, Chomsky asks novel questions, trying to find why the language organ works the way it does. The core suggestion is that linguistic representations and derivation of linguistic structure should not be superfluous, that is, they should not contain or make reference to material that is not part of the essentials for interpretation at the interpretive levels, Phonetic Form (PF) and Logical Form (LF). Moreover, it is claimed that syntactic computations are subject to economy conditions, such as the Last Resort condition, the principle of Equidistance etc. Operations are thought to be invoked so that uninterpretable features (linguistic features that are not part of LF or PF) be checked and stripped off the derivation. The emerging picture is that of a highly restricted computational mechacnim of the human languages, with a small set of rules and cross-linguistic variation restricted to morphological properties of the languages (that is, choice of featural make-up of linguistic items).
It should be noted that apart from the introductory parts of the four chapters, which deal with general theoretical issues in contemporary syntax, the book is intended for the advanced reader in syntax. The author makes use of all the advanced machinery in the field and breaks ground in several cases by proposing new terminology and new ways of looking at perennial problems of linguistic thought. 'The Minimalist Program' is by far the most influential book of the nineties and has lead to a radical shift to syntactic research since its publication. So, if you are really interested in the philosophy on language, if you are working or would like to work on contemporary syntax this book is not just good. It's a masterpiece.