The Minimalist Program (henceforth MP) means different things to different people. In an open debate this year published in the journal Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (vol. 18), two of the issues raised were the extent to which MP is a different theory from Government and Binding theory (henceforth GB), and the extent to which MP gives better results than GB. In this class I present four points of tension between MP and GB, and discuss four ways in which MP does give better results than GB.
Lecture one. Four points of tension between MP and GB: D-structure, S-structure, A-movement, and A-bar movement. In this lecture I outline the MP and point out the points of departure from GB that it motivates.
Lecture two. A-bar movement in MP: Locality, Phases, and the Cycle. In this lecture, the notion of phases (developed in Chomsky 2000, 2001) is examined, along with their relationship to the cycle and to successive-cyclic movement. I argue that the connection between the cycle and successive-cyclic A-bar movement, which could only be stipulated in GB, follows from assumptions made natural by MP.
Lecture three. A-movement in MP: Expletives and Associates. The GB and MP analyses of impersonal constructions are compared. MP considerations rule out certain kinds of analyses that were possible in GB, and it is argued that this has good results.
Lecture four. S-structure in MP: Case. The Case Filter is an S-structure filter in GB, but there is no S-structure in MP. I examine the role of Case as an uninterpretable feature and suggest how it should be treated in the MP.
Lecture five. D-structure in MP: The Zero Level. D-structure is the level of theta-role assignment in GB. In this lecture I examine how the most basic level of projection should be treated in an MP analysis, and show some of the advantages to this approach over that which preceded it.
A list of recommended background readings will be posted here shortly.