Lectures in the Minimalist Program

The lectures consider the progression of ‘Merge to Move’?beginning with Principles of Locality which operate over an array of Binding constraints, then to combine Members (a, b) (an external merge) which establishes an unordered Set {a, b}, then to Local Move operations (internal merge) which establishes an ordered Pair >. From these sequences of external to internal merge-operations, an array of syntactic phenomena come into view, each of which enters some form of an explanatory equation, as argued for by Minimalist pursuits. As a broad sweeping ‘pedagogical device’, we peer into myriad aspects behind Lasnik’s ‘Anti-locality’ Condition. What does ‘locality’ exactly mean here (c-command)? How is it that adjacency is banned from recursive syntax (X-bar)? The condition stipulates that if an item gets displaced (internal merge), it cannot move into its existing phrase, but rather must expand a higher/functional phrase. How does this condition affect movement (e.g., wh-movement, head-to-head movement) regarding ‘Merge over Move’, as well as notions of transfer/spell-out involving phrasal projection? Other topics include Merge over Move, Phase-base theory, Light verb constructs, VP-shells, Principles of economy of movement, and Reasons for movement. The lectures contained within this coursebook are designed as a graduate-student guide to general issues surrounding the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995).