Linguistic Minimalism

Produktbeschreibung

Boeckx examines the foundations and explains the underlying philosophy of the Minimalist Program for linguistic theory, the most radical version to date of Noam Chomsky's naturalistic approach to language. He exemplifies its methods, considers the significance of its results, and explores its roots and antecedents. He disentangles and clarifies current debates and shows how the Minimalist Program lies at the centre of the enterprise to understand the human language faculty. The book is written for everyone in and outside the field who wants to know about current developments in theoretical linguistics. 

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1: The Minimalist Gamble
1.1: Minimalism in a nutshell
1.2: How to approach minimalism
1.3: Author's aims
2: The Minimalist roots
2.1: The birth of modern biolinguistics
2.2: Levels of Adequacy
2.3: The Poverty of Stimulus, and what must be done about it
2.4: Computational properties of the language organ
2.4.1: Early results
2.4.2: Later developments
2.4.3: Parameters
2.5: Conclusion
3: The Minimalist Core
3.1: The Minimalist Core
3.1.1: The Minimalist Core
3.1.2: Some Generalizations
3.2: Taking stock
3.3: The notion of 'program' and how it applies to minimalism
3.3.1: Program vs. Theory
3.3.2: Lakatos on research programs
3.4: Conclusion
4: The Minimalist Impact
4.1: The Galilean Style in science
4.2: Why-questions
4.3: Beauty in science
4.4: The Galilean Style and Biology
4.4.1: Linguistics as biology
4.4.2: Two scientific cultures
4.4.3: Back to Laws of Form
4.4.4: The evolution of the language faculty
4.4.5: Language and cognition
4.5: Conclusion
5.: Minimalist Highlights
5.1.: Caveat lector
5.2.: Evaluating the objections to the program
5.3.: Specific minimalist analyses
5.3.1.: Control
5.3.2.: Copies and linearization
5.3.3.: A constraint on multiple wh-fronting
5.3.4.: Successive cyclicity
5.3.5.: Bare Phrase Structure
5.3.6.: Sluicing
5.3.7.: Parasitic gaps
5.3.8.: Existential constructions
5.4.: Conclusion
6: The minimalist Seduction