Chomsky's Minimalism

by Seuren, Pieter A. M.

• ISBN13: 9780195173062
• ISBN10: 0195173066
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-08-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Noam Chomsky's current theory, published in 1995, is known as The Minimalist Program and has been presented as his crowning achievement. It argues, familiarly, that there exists a universal grammar that is hardwired, and that, like an efficient machine, this grammar will tend to use the leastpossible number of constraints (phonetically and syntactically) to produce an utterance. Minimalism has spawned in linguistics an entire research program, despite being fundamentally misguided, according to distinguished linguist and philosopher of language Pieter Seuren. Seuren's accessible and spirited attack argues that the Minimalist Program is deeply flawed. He proposes that it fails to satisfy the basic criteria for sound scientific work, such as respect for data, unambiguous formulations, and falsifiability. Seuren points to the original acrimonious split inthe 1960s and 1970s between Chomsky's generative grammar and the alternative generative semantics proposed by his followers, and argues that the latter theory was sounder and unfairly suppressed. Seuren maintains that this suppression--and the cult surrounding Chomsky and Minimalism moregenerally--has done great damage to linguistics by impairing open discussion of empirical issues and excluding valid alternatives. Chomsky's Minimalism will generate controversy among linguists in its attack on the fundamental assumptions used by an entire generation of researchers.

Author Biography

Pieter A. M. Seuren's current position is as Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. He is also the author of A View of Language (OUP 2002).

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(28)
Stated aim	3	(2)
The hard truth about the MP	5	(6)
Further misgivings	11	(9)
Presentation and terminology	20	(4)
Mysterious paradigm mixing	24	(4)
Empirical issues	28	(3)
The Mechanism of the MP under Scrutiny	31	(20)
Some ``guiding ideas''	31	(3)
A closer inspection of the ``computational system''	34	(16)
Conclusion	50	(1)
The Language Faculty	51	(46)
Principles and Parameters: a historical note	53	(4)
Modularity and the random-generator position	57	(4)
Chomsky's ambiguous realism	61	(10)
Instantaneous language evolution	71	(5)
An alternative view of the language faculty	76	(20)
Conclusion	96	(1)
Questions of Method and Adequacy	97	(28)
What can confirm or disconfirm a paradigm?	98	(15)
Chomsky as a higher authority	113	(3)
Ecologism and formalism	116	(2)
What to do with evidence?	118	(6)
Conclusion	124	(1)
What Is Functional about the MP?	125	(25)
The minimalist version of functionalism	125	(2)
How perfect is language?	127	(3)
Optimal language design and model building: the ``fable''	130	(4)
Language and communication	134	(3)
The minimalist program is not minimalist	137	(6)
Why choices? The case of Mauritian Creole	143	(4)
Sociolinguistic factors	147	(2)
Conclusion	149	(1)
What Is Conceptually Necessary about the MP?	150	(19)
Conceptual motivation for the random generator?	151	(11)
Is the ``displacement property'' conceptually motivated?	162	(6)
Conclusion	168	(1)
Surface-Driven Elements of Semantic Interpretation	169	(22)
The question stated	170	(5)
Focusing strategies	175	(10)
Presuppositions	185	(1)
Operator scope	186	(3)
Conclusion	189	(2)
The Embarrassment of Evidence	191	(40)
Deletion and Raising in infinitival complements	192	(24)
Copying phenomena	216	(2)
Existential there	218	(10)
Conclusion	228	(3)
References	231	(8)
Index	239