minimalist programme/program (MP)

A development in GENERATIVE linguistic thinking, which emphasizes the aim of making statements about language which are as simple and general as possible. The term ‘programme’ expresses the notion that this is an ongoing research initiative, not a fully articulated grammatical theory. All REPRESENTATIONS and DERIVATIONAL processes should be as ECONOMICAL as possible, in terms of the number of devices proposed to account for language phenomena (the principle of economy) – in effect, an application of Occam’s razor. There should be no REDUNDANT or superfluous elements in the representation of sentence structure: each element must play a role and must be interpreted (the principle of full interpretation). The four LEVELS of representation recognized in standard GOVERNMENT-BINDING THEORY (D-structure, S-structure, logical form (LF) and phonetic form (PF)) are reduced to two: LF and PF, referred to as INTERFACE levels. Minimally, the mapping of sounds to meanings requires no more than a lexicon and a computational (SYNTACTIC) procedure which gives lexical elements a PHONOLOGICAL and a SEMANTIC identity. The grammar is modelled as a COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEM containing a NUMERATION of LEXICAL items, to which operations of MOVE and MERGE apply in order to build up a STRUCTURAL DESCRIPTION. All INFLECTED words are formed in the lexicon. Operations are driven by MORPHOLOGICAL necessity, with features being checked for their applicability. Economy constraints, such as PROCRASTINATE and GREED, are used to compare derivations involving the same lexical resources and reject those which do not conform. The derivation eventually splits into phonetic and semantic representations (following SPELL-OUT), which must CONVERGE to produce grammatical sentences. In post-2000 developments of the programme, the existence of the interface levels of representation has been questioned. Derivation proceeds PHASE by phase, and at the end of each phase relevant features are transferred to articulatory phonetic and conceptual intentional systems.